


My New Schedule

by backroombull (chinashopbull)



Category: Scrubs (TV)
Genre: Ageplay if you squint, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Bladder Control, Crying, Dacryphilia, Daddy Kink, Daddy/boy dynamic, Desperation, Dom/sub, Don't Like Don't Read, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gift Fic, Headspace, Humiliation, JDox, Light Bondage, M/M, Men Crying, Omorashi, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Praise Kink, Shower Sex, Spanking, Subdrop, Subspace, Trans JD, Verbal Abuse, Wetting, YKINMK, kink tomato, tags are warnings, up-against-the-wall sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-04-05 07:26:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chinashopbull/pseuds/backroombull
Summary: Dr. Cox doesn’t often look… like this, what’s the word? Whatever it is, it’s hypnotic."Okay, look, Newbie, you’re agoddamn fantasticintern and a damn fine human being under all that hair product and terribleCosmoadvice and god knows you’ve earned yourself the right to a little praise, and for whatever reason you’ve been cursed to want it frommeso. I guess that kinda makes it my responsibility to see sure thatcha get it.”Earnest.That’s the word. Jesus.Oh no why is that so hot.“You’re a good boy, JD.”ohgod“And you’re comin’ with me.”________________________________________The one where Dr. Cox sort-of-accidentally makes JD piss his scrubs, and of all the things,thisis what leads to them boning for the first time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tijuanabiblestudies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tijuanabiblestudies/gifts).



> Set during 114: My Drug Buddy, but different.  
> Notable canon fudges: Alex the MRI girl does _not_ return at the end of 113; JD, not Turk, ends up on the same pee schedule as Dr. Cox; Dr. Cox has an office; Jordan has no intention of reclaiming her relationship with Perry.   
> And JD is trans, because, well, JD _is_ trans, but that's not what the story's about.
> 
> **Tags have been rewritten and are warnings. Please, please heed.**
> 
> Story is 2 chapters, but the first can be read as a standalone.

The nervous sweat in JD’s palms is starting to spread to his fingers. All the way down to the cuticles. Yucky. Also: not helping him keep a good firm manly grip on his STP. He hasn’t had any problems with… leakage… since second year of med school, but the last thing he needs right now is a tinkle down the inside of his scrubs. Not in present company.

Dr. Cox is staring at the wall in front of his face so hard he looks like his eyes are pinned in place, Clockwork Orange style. Despite the masterclass demonstration of full-body rage-clenching, though, he still manages to piss like a normal human being.

His muscle control must be _phenomenal._

JD eases his weight off one leg and spreads his knees just a skosh to readjust the STP. Better safe than sorry.

The STP makes a hollow plastic sound as he buries it in place. It’s just a tiny little sound that he doesn’t usually think about or even notice — most bathrooms, including in the hospital, have enough ambient white noise to cover it up. And in the hospital, people have all kinds of tubes and things coming out of them, so most people don’t question that kind of thing here.

Unless, of course, they know you personally.

“Havin’ a little trouble there, Bethany?”

…Of _course_ Dr. Cox heard it. How did that tiny little noise make it all the way over the sound of Dr. Cox’s molars grinding?

“Good. You _should_ be having trouble because — and I can’t believe I have to say this exact sequence of words out loud _yet again_ — grown-ass men _do not have_ ‘bathroom buddies’.” 

“Yeah but they _could.”_

“But they _won’t.”_ Dr. Cox slams a fist down on the flusher and commences some very angry handwashing.

Oh, actually? The sound of the sink is helpful. Not helpful enough to get the flow started, but encouraging nonetheless.

“’S not like I’m doing it on purpose,” JD mumbles to the urinal.

“Pretty sure you can _stop_ doing it. On purpose.”

“…I’m trying,” JD says — even more quietly, because even before he hears the door move, he knows Dr. Cox is already storming out, and already slammed shut the input valve that connects his ears to his brain.

“Never mind him,” he says to his nervous bladder. “You just do what you came here to do.”

Eventually, it does.

“Attaboy,” says JD.

 

The whacky coincidental men’s room meetups play out like a montage all week. Dr. Cox’s growing impatience is no more disturbing than it is on your average Thursday, though the added element of both their pants being open adds a new and interesting dimension of Oh Shit Oh No to the encounters.

No, don’t say “encounters”. That makes it sound like they’re fucking each other into the supply closet walls on the sly and on the regular, bringing each other to the place of moans and screams and then shushing each other, carefully, and.

And JD’s never been quite that lucky. Hell, he can barely get a _girl_ to look his way. Unless she’s using him to convince herself that she’s Not A Lesbian... and it’s interesting that she prefers to do this with men who just... happen to have vaginas... but eh, that’s a whole different inner monologue. And probably a long, mutually teary conversation with Elliot. JD’s been hoping to save it for National Coming Out Day.

Anyway, Dr. Cox’s rage bar is filling up steadily, a little more of that safe black cartoon “censored” bar turning bloody red each time one of them opens a bathroom door, three times a shift (five, when they both have to pull a double on Tuesday night). Now JD’s just waiting for him to hit that breaking point. To lash out however strikes his fancy this time — a verbal beat-down, a crap job to do, typical ritual humiliation — then, of course, Cox will unilaterally decide how quickly to move on from there based on how JD takes his “punishment”. 

At this point JD is just watching it loom up over the horizon, as powerless against it as Dorothy against the twister.

(What a very heterosexual thought to have. Remind yourself again why you blew off your date with Alex to work late? To work alongside Dr. Cox? Late, late at night, with the lights all turned down, after his deodorant and personal boundaries have mostly worn off and he’s just this exhausted unshaved engine of healing masculinity too tired to tell JD off?)

He _tried_ changing his pee schedule. He did. _Is_ trying, in fact. But there’s only so much you can do about that kind of thing when you work in a hospital and have essentially no say in when (or if) you get to perform trifling personal activities like sleeping, eating, doing your laundry, exfoliating, buying groceries, updating your hair-products review blog, having an original thought, masturbating, or, of course, going numbers one or two. 

The fact is that JD’s bladder has settled into a rhythm that at least _sort of_ works with the rest of his life, and it’s not going to change its mind even if Dr. Cox’s bladder got there first. No, not even if Dr. Cox’s bladder is extremely territorial.

Wow, the face-off between two snarling bladders would make a very, very weird Animal Planet special. They could call it _Pissing Match_ … nah, never mind, it's too on the nose.

So, mid-week, JD changes tactics. Starts strategically randomizing which of the hospital’s many, many bathrooms he avails himself of. 

Which, in an uncanny twist of fate, leads to JD actually _walking in on_ Dr. Cox as he’s just finishing up in the private toilet in the only empty single room Sacred Heart currently has available. (Into which a patient is admitted 45 minutes later.)

If there is a god... he, she, or they must be the trickster type. 

Tricksters are notoriously stubborn.

…It occurs to JD while he’s doing paperwork that the entire weird tinkling issue could be resolved if he just stuck to one or two bathrooms — marked his territory, if you will — and let Dr. Cox have every other bathroom in the hospital to himself. Or. Not to _himself,_ it’s still a public… ah, whatever.

Or if he waited to see where Dr. Cox was headed toward at around That Time, and aimed himself in the opposite direction.

But where would be the fun in that?

Although you wouldn’t have to press JD too hard to get him to admit, after the second appletini, that goading Dr. Cox is appealing if only for the extra attention, he’s also discovered that he genuinely enjoys touring the hospital bathrooms. Mixin’ it up a little. Changing the scenery. Sowing wild oa— ah, wrong idiom, never mind.

On Friday morning he wakes up with the opening number from _Avenue Q_ stuck in his head for some reason, which turns into the _Sesame Street_ theme song during his commute, before getting drowned out by the noise and concerns of the day (and making a brief reprise during a lunchbreak daydream involving Bert and Ernie and a weirdly heated debate about the virtues of pudding skins). 

JD is a person with two eyes connected to a feeling heart and therefore he loves the Muppets. So sue him if today’s fantasies have put him in a chipper mood. 

Chipper enough to answer Dr. Cox’s questions in song whenever possible. Joy is the good kind of infectious, right? Dr. Cox's hair is a maelstrom of static today and he seems like he could certainly do with some cheering up.

But Dr. Cox seems to believe this is part of an elaborate plot to unravel his human suit and reveal the foaming, snarling eldritch horror beneath.

To which the only obvious reply is to change tunes, literally, to "The Grouch National Anthem". It's a bit lower than JD's natural range, but he makes it work.

Dr. Cox… does not agree. He slams his clipboard down on the second-floor nurses' counter, sending everyone fleeing in a kind of cloud, like a flock of starlings after a gunshot.

Oh no.

_”Listen,_ you hap-hap-happy little pissant. I got half a nerve left and I can _not_ for the life of me figure out _why_ on _earth_ you’re just — grabbin' it with both your greedy little paws and just —  _gnaw-ing-on-it_ like it's a goddamn _candy-coated acorn_ and you're just the _dumbest_ little squirrel in the park, now… _Why_ would a young _medical intern_ be so veryvery, veryveryvery, very _very_ stupid? Un _less,_ of course, said intern actually _had_ … the full astonishing brainpower of a large _rodent_ who spends more time worryin' about how fluffy his _fucking tail_ is than he does — oh, I dunno… _learning how_ to be a _fucking doctor_ and, gosh, maybe… maybe learnin' to _read the fucking room?"_

He picks up his clipboard just so he can slam it down again. JD flinches, just a little bitty bit.

Dr. Cox steps into his personal space and drops his voice several dangerous octaves. Thus marking the traditional shift from ranting _at_ JD because JD is too dumb to get out of the way, to _directly addressing_ JD. The part JD both fears and craves. See, this is why he doesn’t get out of the way. He may have a serious problem.

“Now I don’t know if my ex-wife managed to slip past all the garlic and holy water I got stashed all around this hellhole to keep her stench out of the one part of purgatory I get to spend _every waking hour_ in,” says Dr. Cox, Directly To JD, “or if there’s somethin’ about _me_ that attracts people I _hate_ into _every corner of my life_ no matter how hard I pray and eat all my veggies. But between _here_ and _her_ and now _you_ I’ve got just about all I can deal with before I sprout fangs and start sucking the life outta people my _self._ I can’t get a damn _minute_ and that’s all I _want,_ Newbie, just one goddamn minute to myself to take a _piss_ for the love of christ, and I can’t even get _that_ because, ho boy, here _you_ come.

“With your _bad singing_ and your _stupid hair_ and you won’t. Why. Why won’t you leave me the fuck alone. Why won’t _any_ of you people leave me the fuck alone, but _especially_ you, Virginia, yes you. With your creepy happy-go-lucky sunshine _bullshit_. You’re like a horrifying corporate mascot who’s on every billboard behind every traffic light like my own personal Ronald McDonald. Just hell-fucking-bent on forcing your creepy smiley way past my boundaries to try an’ get my mouth around whatever it is you’re calling ‘meat’ these days.”

Dr. Cox pauses, narrows his eyes in thought. Yeah, that one got a little weird.

“...I like clowns,” JD mumbles. 

Dr. Cox doesn’t even facepalm. He just... turns on his heel. Walks away. Just before he rounds the corner he snarls, without turning around, “You’re a _goddamn embarrassment,_ Dorian.”

And then he’s gone.

Luckily, it's almost time for JD’s lunch break, so nobody misses him while he presses his back into the corner at the top of the stairwell, next to the roof door, and cries it out for a good twenty minutes or so. 

It helps. Some.

Hankering for the puppety good vibes from this morning, JD decides to swing by pediatrics for his post-lunch bathroom break (and a Pedialyte; all that crying got him feeling dehydrated, and the Pedialyte they give to the adult patients tastes yucky). 

Also, he just kinda _likes_ being in pediatrics? Not the field of medicine, obviously, just the ward of Sacred Heart. In one of the ward murals — handily enough, the one over the water fountain between the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms — there’s a purple unicorn he likes to call Chester. No one cheers him up like Chester.

Toilet first, though. It’s a bit urgent.

When he opens the door and the first thing he sees is Dr. Cox kneeling in front of a mini urinal — and Dr. Cox’s head rotating slowly toward him, with murder or spontaneous combustion or both in his eyes — JD is less surprised to find him here, and more surprised that Dr. Cox’s head stops rotating at the normal human limit instead of spinning around and around and around.

“No,” says Dr. Cox, simply.

JD jabs a thumb over his shoulder and flaps his other hand in a settle-down gesture and shuffles backward and probably makes a stupid face. “You know what? I think I’ll go use the one in the burn ward, just — feel free to just forget I was ever h—“

The Whistle stops him, from speaking or from moving, before he even registers it. JD looks down at his feet. Wow, that is _really_ pavlovian. How has he never noticed that before? Is this a recent development?

“You,” says Dr. Cox. Points to a far corner. “There. Face the wall and for the love of _god,_ newbie, do not speak _or sing_ unless you’re ready to find out what a good swift kick in the urethra will do for your high notes.”

“‘Kay.” 

JD tries not to listen to Dr. Cox doing his business, partly out of decency but mostly out of a very strong desire to avoid an accident. The subtle tinkle noises present a horrifying challenge. As does Dr. Cox’s throaty groan of relief. He sure is taking his time.

At the squeak of Dr. Cox’s sneakers twisting on the floor, JD turns toward the urinals to take his turn.

“Nyyyope now you just turn your pasty little ass back around there, Clarabelle. I’ll tell you when you can move.” The sink runs. For a longer time than seems strictly necessary. Gurgling down the drain. Splashy splashy.

Funnily enough, this isn’t really cheering him up much.

“Alright, GI Jane, about face and feel free to just hold your position there, nn’kay.” He’s drying his hands off hard enough to start a friction fire, and probably would if the paper towel weren’t wet. “This song is officially overplayed.”

“I wasn’t singing,” JD says, and _then_ realizes it was a metaphor.

“Oh. My god. I can’t, I just…” He’s three steps to the door before drifting to a stop. “No. Come on, Perry. This is for the greater good.” He faces JD again. “This whole — excuse the expression, Sister Mary Sunshine — this whole song’n’dance here, this _pee-pee dance_ if that’s what you gotta call it and, knowing you, I’m sure you just _gotta…_ This just absolutely Cannot continue.”

JD feels something small but heavy fall from his face to the pit of his stomach. “Look, I _swear_ I’m not—“

_“Yes_ I know you’re not doing it on purpose and, well, gosh darn it if I just don’t care. Now normally I’d just grit the old teeth and bear it until it runs its course, but see every time I try and do that I can actually hear the crunchy-crunchy sound of my arteries constricting. And if I listen real, real close, it sounds like they’re whispering a little suggestion in my ears.” He steps into JD’s personal bubble and leans up to his ear. He smells like very stale aftershave and barely suppressed rage. “You wanna know what they say?” He gets closer, and his whispered breath makes JD’s ear tingle: _“Set him on fiiirrre and roast a marshmallow over his smouldering visssceraaa.”_

Dr. Cox leans back just enough to make sure JD can see his Crazy Eyes. “That’s really what they say, newbie. I’m not making this stuff up and oh gosh one of these times — I'm only human, _yanno?_ — one of these times I’m not gonna be able to resist their siren song anymore, I just won't. They are very convincing. I don't even like marshmallows but the _voices,_ Ginger, _the voices.”_

JD clears his throat and tries not to shuffle from foot to foot (he does anyway). He tries not to laugh, but despite the threat and despite the fact that he can now feel his own pulse beating _in_ his extraordinarily full bladder, Dr. Cox is still close enough to smell and also there’s a rainbow painted on the far wall that JD can see just behind Dr. Cox’s (secretly) carefully maintained perm. Poor guy just can't hide his own queerness. The universe won't let him.

So maybe JD can be forgiven for it when a nervous titter slips out from between his teeth.

Dr. Cox’s eyes won’t go any wider than that but he sure does try. “Ohhh I’m not kidding, Sasha. This stops _today.”_

“I’m… not really sure what to… um. How, exactly, do you…”

The Crazy Eyes drift down the front of JD’s scrubs for a second and then, in perfect, predictable rhythm, Dr. Cox roars a noise of disgust and he turns toward the door like he can’t stand looking at JD anymore. “Fall in, private. We’re taking a march.”

JD squirms and looks longingly at the urinals.

Dr. Cox whistles as he swings the door open. “Now, Wendy!”

“Yeah but I’ve still gotta—“

“NOW. Let’s go-go-go, c’mon, _move_ it!” One more whistle and JD is hustling out the door behind him.

He feels small following behind Dr. Cox’s billowing lab coat. Like half the usual size. But also — maybe strangely — sort of shielded? 

Dr. Cox opens his office door and grab’s JD’s shirt just behind the shoulder to swing him through. The door slams behind them. Then something happens that’s never happened before:

It locks.

JD tries not to play with his hands. “Um,” he says.

“No speaking. You just stand right there.”

“Right here?”

“I said no speaking.”

JD leans the back of his thighs against the edge of Dr. Cox’s desk and clasps his hands awkwardly in front of him and looks at the ground, while Dr. Cox takes up post with his back to the door and folds his arms, settling in.

And then stares him down.

And stares just a bit more.

And then, just to shake things up a little, continues to stare.

JD’s body suddenly tries to do what it urgently, desperately needs to. He clenches and stares at the books on the shelf until the moment passes. Dr. Cox inhales, loudly, through the nose. 

JD clears his throat, determined to neither squeak nor stutter. “I don’t, uh um, don’t.” _Damn!_

“Zip it.” The command is softer than expected. The usual harsh grate in Dr. Cox’s voice turns into something husky, when he turns his own volume down. Somewhere there's an alternate timeline where Dr. Cox uses this gravelly, soft, masculine, normal speaking voice on an everyday basis. And inflicts alternate-JD with a lingering boner every flippin' day just by saying good morning. 

JD looks up at him from the corner of his eye, already too late to avoid getting his hopes up.

Dr. Cox makes a pained expression that could mean anything. “…Okay well I suppose you could do with an explanation. I mean I _guess_ it’s only fair, or something.”

“Ya think?” JD says.

_“Please_ shut up. I don’t remember rescinding the gag order.”

Jerk. He’s such a jerk. Why’s he gotta be such a jerk about everything? What exactly did JD _do_ this time to warrant punishment? Nothing! He’s done nothing. If Dr. Cox just wants an excuse to blow off steam by torturing someone he could honestly just _spank_ JD and call it a day.

No. Nonono now is _not_ the time to get a boner. Especially since the chances of him ending up across Dr. Cox’s thigh are nonexistent.

…Nor is it the time to cry. Oh god no you already cried today _why would you let yourself cry now? Don't!!_ JD bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, then works the bloody spot deeper into his mouth and sucks on it. More blood.

“Alright here’s the story, Chatty Cathy. Since _clearly_ no matter what I do the universe is just gonna keep right on shovin’ you into my path every goddamn time I try to take a leak in peace, I thought, well gee whiz, why don’t we just attack the problem at its source, _yanno?”_

He stops talking to watch JD try (and fail) not to rub his thighs together. Nope, this still doesn’t make any sense.

“I can see you’re still confused,” says Dr. Cox, “and it’s very easy for me to tell because you know why? I see you with that exact same expression on your dummy-dum-dumb face only about four _hundred_ times a day _every_ day since _the_ day you first got tossed at my feet here, so what the heck, this time I’ll throw ya a bone and do all your thinking _for_ you _yet again._ Which I find absolutely remarkable since you did in fact manage to correctly diagnose the issue at hand wayyy back at the beginning of the week, and _that is_ that you, Maryanne, are on the same, how did you put it, _’pee schedule’_ as me. And we’re gonna address that problem right now.”

“Right…?”

“Right here, right now. See, _I'm_ a _good_ doctor, and _I_ devised a treatment plan. 'Cause _as you yourself implied,_ it’s not a problem of space, but of time.” He grins that kind of grin that JD can’t actually read one way or another, as fake-mocking or as real-mocking. Jerk. “So we’re gonna reset your old clock, there.”

…Oh god.

JD understands, immediately. But seeing as he really, really doesn’t want to, he immediately convinces himself that he’s wrong, that there must be some other plan in the works that’s less… sadistic. That he’s still confused.

“And just in case that wasn’t clear,” says Dr. Cox, leaning forward from the waist and absolutely dripping (no don’t say “dripping”) with glee, “seeing as I just went, it’s now on you, Newbie, to put as much chronological distance as humanly possible between your bladder and mine. Half an hour should be enough of a head start but, to be real, real honest, I’d re- _he_ ally prefer more than that so I’m gonna need you to _pinkie promise_ that you’re gonna do your level best for me here.”

For some reason — insanity, perhaps — a wave of giddiness runs up JD’s spine and when it reaches the top he smiles a little.

“The hell are you smiling about?” says Dr. Cox. “You think I’m joking?”

JD’s face falls. “No sir.”

“‘Cause I’m not. I’m really, really, reallyreallyreally re-he- _heally_ not. ‘Sides, I haven’t even told you the best part yet, pumpkin. Now listen up ‘cause this is uncomfortable enough to say even once and believe you me I super don’t wanna have to repeat myself on this. Since _if_ I send you on your merry way out that door I will have absolutely _no reason_ to trust you to just. Dig deep and hold it in with all your spunky little might, _now_ I get to take precious time after the end of my shift, when I should be going home and drinking myself into solitary oblivion as is my god-given _right,_ and _instead_ I get to stand here and babysit _your_ skinny ass. Oh, that's right, Janice. You and me, we’re gonna wait right here, and I’m gonna make _damn sure_ you hold up your end of the bargain so that I just might be able to sleep peacefully tonight without having to chug thirty bucks’ worth of shitty scotch to do it.”

…Oh. Oh shit.

All the blood in JD’s body sinks to his feet, except for the bit that gets rerouted to the muscles straining to hold in his wee.

“You’re not serious,” he tries.

Even though Dr. Cox preceded that whole speech by saying he was serious.

He sure looks serious.

“Oh, you bet your lunch money I’m serious.” 

This seems like the kind of thing JD could sue for. 

“Of course,” says Dr. Cox, “you could just stroll on out this door right now and handle your business however you see fit, and god knows I couldn’t _legally_ do anything to stop you. But if you do, just _know_ that I will be very, very displeased.” He lets the implied threat dangle incomplete. Sometimes he does know when he needs to stop talking, where the limits of his power are.

JD wishes he were better at that himself. 

Dr. Cox's malevolent delight fades, as does his all-for-show grin.

“Your call,” he says. Eyebrows raised. Waiting for an answer.

See, that’s funny, ’cause he says that as if there’s really a choice. As if JD could face the genuine disappointment that flashes unchecked across Dr. Cox’s face for just a moment every time he says those words to JD —  _your call_ — and JD chooses to go against him. 

And it’s not _that_ big a deal, right? It’s just pee. It’s only ritual humiliation. It’s just —  _jesus christ_ it’s hard to think with his pelvic muscles spasming this hard.

“Newbie,” says Dr. Cox. “I’d really appreciate it if you did this for me.”

The giddiness brushes its tickly fingers up JD’s spine again. His unmentionables tickle too, pumping hard against nothing. Apparently they're not sure how to handle an erection and a panicking bladder at the same time. And now Dr. Cox is asking him to _think?_ Yeesh.

He’s still trying to think when his bladder shrieks and his hips cant involuntarily sideways. “If it’ll get you to shut up about it, fine!” he snaps over the raging in his body. His voice is a bit muffled in his ears and maybe louder than he intended.

“Whoa, Furiosa! Ease up there, willya? You know I can’t resist strong women.”

“I kinda feel like this is humiliating enough already without your ‘playful’ transphobia.” The power of JD’s self-assertion is undermined somewhat when he has to press his palms together and shove them both between his thighs, tightly. 

“I’ll call you whatever I damn well please,” Dr. Cox mumbles, but he scratches his nose like he does when he’s wondering whether he can fit his entire foot into his mouth or just the toes. He refolds his arms and does the Teeth Thing to try and regain his composure. 

Tilts his head at JD’s squirming, which is working its way up from intermittent to constant. “Anytime you wanna tap out,” he says, “you feel free to cry uncle and I’ll letcha go.”

“As if.” 

“Look out, someone’s got his big-boy pants on today. Be sure not to wet 'em, now.”

JD nods, and keeps nodding, and grins but it’s twisted. “Oh, it’s on,” he says, and damn that waver that he can’t keep out of his voice, but _fuck_ he doesn’t have the energy to spare for bravado when every cell in his body is starting to chant in unison.

Dr. Cox watches, grinning openly, easily. He stretches his arms up, the motion fanning out his lab coat so the folds of the fabric draw clear straight lines up toward his shoulders, his chest. He rests his hands on the back of his head, throat bared. Daring. “I can wait,” he says. 

We should all be so lucky.

A tiny Scotty is running around inside JD’s tract, dodging blasts of steam and frantically turning valves while Kirk yells down at him over the com link (in Dr. Cox’s voice) and Scotty calls back “I’m givin’ ‘er all she’s got but she cannae take the pressure, cap—“

_“Newbie!”_

Dr. Cox’s whistle slices through the center of the daydream, severs its lifeline. JD has to catch himself on the desk to stop from falling over.

“Don’t think for one hot second I can’t see you drifting off into your little sunshine fantasy land, and before you say one goddamn word about whatever bizarre phantasms you got going on under that fluffy dome of yours, I need you to know that I don’t _care_ what you were thinking about and I _don’t want to know_ what you were thinking about so feel free to just. Repress that whole lukewarm memory like it never happened.”

“Uh yeah it’s just, it’s—“

“Uh yeah _’it’s just’_ that I really need you to hold onto reality here, skipper. Don’t let that focus slip, nnn’kay sweetcheeks?”

“But I need to…”

Dr. Cox’s eyes narrow up. “What’s this bullshit you ‘need’ to? You don’t _need_ to do anything but sit tight right here and hold it in for another… twenty-two minutes. And hey, here’s a crazy idea, now hear me out. You’re gonna actually stay… in _this_ room—“ he hikes his elbows up high and points at the floor with both hands, twirling his index fingers in little circles “— _with_ me, just for once in your milquetoast sob story of a life. I’m so sick of watching your cheese slide off your cracker all day long, day in and day fucking _out._ I mean, look, I get it, I do. The real world _sucks_ and we all do what we gotta do to deal with it, but there’s just… no reason you should be exempt from _actually dealing_ with it like the rest of us just ‘cause it makes you cry while you masturbate in the shower every morning. You wanna skip off to someplace no one else can go? Leave the rest of us behind just… whenever?” He leans forward, drops his voice. “You think that makes you untouchable?”

What? “No, it’s just… _Jesus christ_ oh god fuck I don’t know if I can—“

“Yes you can.”

“I can’t — please I can’t do this I can’t hold it _please—“_

“Yes,” says Dr. Cox. “You can. And you’re damn well gonna.”

And there’s a moment. Dr. Cox’s eyes on his, unblinking and undistracted, begging JD to show some sign that he understands all the things Dr. Cox is _actually_ trying to say. _Be here with me. Do this for me. Don’t leave me. I’m sorry._

Obviously telepathy isn’t real — though wouldn’t it be cool if… _No. No fantasies._ Nevertheless, Dr. Cox is tossing JD a really heavy set of ideas like it’s a ball and is, oh god, desperately hoping JD’s floppy little girl-hands won’t fumble it.

(Right, think about football. Think about baseball. And not about playing a game of catch with Dr. Cox, or any kind of pitcher/catcher innuendo.)

JD grinds his teeth so hard they creak in his jaw but it’s not enough, the rims of his eyes are still damp and getting wetter, the tiny space inside his boxer-briefs is still damp and getting wetter, and he’s pretty sure it’s not from his bladder. This… doesn’t make it any easier to hold it in.

There are no more hidden muscles to discover and clamp — he’s already found them all and got them all working in overdrive, they’re all clenched up tight, and even when they’re all working together to hold him in they’re still not enough. God, why is it never enough? Why is _he_ never enough? Maybe if he can do this, if he can clamp and hold and hold and _hold_ and _prove_ he’s strong then maybe Dr. Cox will stop misgendering him, will stop shutting him up and brushing him off and generally treating him like he’s an embarrassment at best, a personal shame at worst, a barely tolerated agitation on your average Tuesday.

Maybe Dr. Cox will actually be willing to act toward JD a little more like (JD’s pretty sure) they both want him to act. If not publicly then… at least… ever?

Oh god it’s starting to hurt. Physically. (Emotionally it’s been hurting the whole time, but eh, that’s life.)

He sinks to the floor, and being in a crouch squashes his bladder and he knows better, he knows it’s not helping, he knows _this is the exact position that human evolution chose for all forms of waste expulsion,_ but his body is telling him to do things right now that he’s lost the power to defy, and bobbing up and down by bending and straightening his knees has done all it can now. He rubs the edges of his shoes together, squirming all the way down to his toes. The laces on his left shoe have come undone. Sweat prickles all down his sides and it’s itchy.

“Dr. Cox,” he says, and barely hears his own voice; is too distracted by the miracle that allowing even the muscles in his mouth to move doesn’t automatically signal the rest of his body to _release_ oh god — “Please. _Please.”_

Dr. Cox has moved away from the door, is standing much closer than JD remembers from the last time he managed to look up. Cox’s arms are no longer raised in a display of dominance, one hand in his coat pocket now and the other dangling and looking kind of lost. “Please what,” he says. He doesn’t say it in his angry voice. He says it in his _oh my god it hurts to care_ voice.

And oh my _god._

“Oh god don’t do this to me. Oh god was that out loud? Oh god _please.”_ JD’s voice does _not_ squeak, no sir it does _not,_ and it _definitely_ doesn’t break.

“Twelve more minutes,” says Dr. Cox. And now it’s the voice he sends coasting over JD’s shoulder when JD’s frantic and struggling with a procedure on his own for the first time. “C’mon. Just twelve more minutes. You can do it.”

JD’s underwear rubs up against him when he squirms. Why is he doing this. Why is Dr. Cox doing this and why is JD himself doing this. 

Why does he _need_ to do this.

Dr. Cox’s eyes are on him, and they’re not looking away. 

Oh, right. That’s why.

Good god, why is JD like this. His eyes sting and for a blissful minute or two he forgets about the overflow threatening his pants because the overflow of tears is already starting and everything looks smeared. He hears Dr. Cox take a deep breath and, if he weren’t already braced down to the last cell in his body, he’d brace for the verbal abuse. _Oh jesus, are you really crying? God you’re such a girl._

“Oh jesus,” says Dr. Cox — fuck, here it comes. 

But Dr. Cox stops there. What comes in place of harsh words is a sensation that JD doesn’t recognize at first.

Turns out if you hold in your pee long enough you forget what it feels like to actually let it go.

It hurts. It actually hurts. In his bladder, in his kidneys, he's _letting it go_ so why does it feel like he's being _crushed_ it — hurts, it —

His boxer-briefs are sopping before he realizes what’s happening. The room fades as the relentless wet seeps past the overburdened cloth of his underwear and crawls into his scrubs, following the thin weave of cloth down his thighs and then spilling, too heavy too much for the overwhelmed fabric, dripping from there down his skin, following the curves of his thighs toward the ground. Crawling around his folded ankles and seeping into the cuffs of his socks. Dripping onto the tile floor and puddling out from there, drawing a circle around him that grows, and smells, and marks him as the epicenter of disaster and attention.

The pain passes more suddenly than it began. A tingly shiver of nerves cascades down the back of JD’s neck as his entire body turns liquid in one long, slow slide, like the most profound exhalation. For a few seconds, he genuinely couldn't care less about anything besides _oh GOD yes FINALLY._ His eyes won't open and he just might follow this sinuous action of _relaxing_ all the way down into unconsciousness, and yeah, that might be nice. Really nice, actually.

Then he remembers what he'd be landing in if he passed out. That fast, the euphoria is _gone._ The circle around him just keeps growing.

Who knew his body had so much to give. 

You know those nightmares where you show up for rounds without your pants and the janitor has a spotlight for some reason that he fixes right on you, just in case somebody whose opinion you care about hasn’t noticed yet that it’s time to point and laugh? Yeah, it’s like that. A big puddle of piss encircling him like the light of a halogen beam. He balls up his fists against his temples.

JD’s weight settles finally in his feet as the stream slows to a trickle. Boneless with the simultaneous release of every muscle, he wobbles in his crouch, spoiling his balance; his knees lower slowly, shifting him from a crouch to a kneel. They make a soft pat sound as they land listlessly in the puddle. It’s _still_ trickling, jesus. He can hear it. He can’t even feel it anymore, knows on a distant med-school level that his bladder’s empty, that this is the backed-up waste working its way down from his kidneys and straight out. If he fights it he’ll just have to go again in five minutes.

Like there’s any fight left in him at all. Fuck. _Fuck!_

He can hear Dr. Cox breathing through the palms of his hands, fingers interlaced under his nose.

Yep, that’s right. All of this just happened in front of _him._

JD doesn’t try to fight the tears any more than he tries to fight the piss. Why bother? He’s gonna lose anyway, and Dr. Cox already has an eyeful of what a hopeless mess he’s suddenly becom— he’s really been all along and how _stupid_ he is to play-act at being an actual goddamn capable desirable adult all the time when he’s clearly not, when Dr. Cox has always seen straight through him to _this_ and now there’s _proof_ so there’s no way Dr. Cox will ever look at JD the way that JD…

The thoughts drift into a patch of fog and get lost somewhere inside it; the fog condenses into tears rolling down the front of his face, salting the corners of his mouth.

The trickle finally, _finally_ runs dry. His legs feel cold.

Dr. Cox sighs long, and low, and maybe pained. JD closes his eyes.

“Good boy,” says Dr. Cox.

JD’s unmentionables twitch, hard. At first he thinks it’s just a post-pee spasm while his bits try to remember if they’re supposed to be holding in or letting go or what. But his eyes reopen, and he looks up at Dr. Cox without meaning to. Right at his face, even though it’s the last thing he feels emotionally prepared to do.

Cox’s brows raise slightly. It’s his _I’m dead fucking serious, Newbie, so pay attention for once_ face. 

_“Good_ boy,” he says again.

And JD’s nethers can’t get much wetter than they already are, but suddenly they go from chilly-wet to burning-wet and he understands what the twitch was.

Oh god not now.

Oh god he’s never faced a humiliation quite this _complete._

He doesn’t want to, but he presses his palms to his forehead to hide his face, just in time to break. He sobs quietly, because you never know who’s passing by the door with one ear open, but keeping his voice down doesn’t mean a gentle cry. 

Oh my god he couldn’t even make it the full thirty minutes.

He focuses on not using his voice, and not gagging on the wheezing sobs that rattle in and out of his chest.

Oh my god Dr. Cox is never going to even _pretend_ to tolerate JD’s admittedly awkward attempts at flirting again.

The sobs drag along the inside of his ribs, like a kid dragging a stick along fenceposts. It bruises. 

Oh my god this _entire thing_ has happened because Dr. Cox wants to see less of him. 

That’s it, that’s the crux of it. Because the truth is JD can’t read minds and Cox isn’t the kind of person who minces words or holds back after all, and any belief on JD’s part about what Cox _really feels and wants deep down_ was just another fantasy and _that’s_ the real reason Cox forbade him from daydreaming his way through this nightmare.

Dr. Cox was just. Being his teacher. Was forcing JD to prove _to himself_ what a messy, childish little loser he actually is.

Because seriously. Who the hell does something like _this_ in a grasping-at-whatever-straws-are-left attempt to please someone who _only wants you to go away?_

(Who the hell _asks_ someone to do something like this?)

Are you happy now?! Is this what you wanted? Devastate the newbie so hard that he gives up begging for your attention all the time? Readjusts his entire biological schedule just to avoid getting stuck in the bathroom with you at the same time for fear of PTSD flashbacks to _this moment?_

This must be what it feels like to get hit by a truck. If the truck also says mean things to you that cut straight to the heart of several of your most deep-seated issues before crushing you against a guardrail.

“…Oh,” croaks Dr. Cox. His voice isn’t much more than a rasp, but JD’s ears are preset to The Cox Station and he hears it even over the sounds of his own strangling breath and crumbling heart. “Wasn’t really expecting that,” says Dr. Cox.

For real?! “Then what _did_ you expect?” JD says louder than he meant to, and hiccups, having lost the rhythm and delicate balance of controlled/uncontrolled crying.

Dr. Cox is pacing, just a step and a half in either direction in the cramped office, dragging the painstakingly coiffed curls out of his hair with hands shaped like claws. The end result is a frizzy mess and JD can’t help but think that the styling paste in the orange tin on the third shelf of the medicine cabinet at home would fix it right up and Dr. Cox would never be happier with a styling job in his life. 

(Oh my god everybody is right about you. Just give it up and de-transition so they shut the fuck up.)

“Jesus _christ_ Newbie, I can’t believe — did you seriously…?”

“Obviously I did!” He doesn’t mean to be shouting. But you know what? He feels okay about shouting. This situation justifies shouting.

“Newbie, _why?_ My _god,_ why would you—“

“You asked me to.”

“Oh my actual god, you can’t be serious. Come the fuck _on,_ Newbie! Grow a pair! Get a pair surgically implanted, I don’t care! Just… just get yourself some balls my _god_ Newbie! If you roll over like this every time somebody—“

“Not,” says JD, and for once Dr. Cox lets himself be interrupted. Exactly when JD was counting on him _not_ to do that. “Not somebody.” And now he can feel it coming, the full screaming-bawling breakdown, the tears that are in fact _completely_ unstoppable, and those are already starting because he knows, he _knows_ he’s actually about to say it out loud for the first time, and this time it’s beyond his control. 

_”You_ asked me to,” he says — again, but differently.

The tears splat against his lap louder than usual, since his thighs are already wet.

Dr. Cox stares at him, and for a long time, he says nothing.

He gets it. 

This time, he gets it. He has to. No ambiguity lost between them this time. The room stinks of fresh piss and there’s no getting around the reality of it.

JD will do any goddamn thing that Dr. Cox says will make him happy.

But just him.

Because… fill in the blank, go ahead, the obvious reason is the right one. _You hear hoofbeats? You go ahead and think ‘horsies’, not zebras._

“Oh… god,” says Dr. Cox. The tone is unfamiliar. It’s not aggravated or disgusted or… 

He hikes up the edges of his labcoat and works himself down to a crouch in front of JD, the toes of his sneakers just barely touching the outside edge of the shame-puddle. Elbows propped on his knees, fingers nested lightly together.

JD feels ill. A muted squeak sneaks out between the deep hushed donkey-kick sobs. He tries to hide behind his own shoulders.

“JD,” says Dr. Cox.

Oh god he never uses his real name oh god he’s in trouble this is it the end it’s over don’t say it’s over don’t say it _please_

“C’mon kid, look at me.”

JD unhunches and looks at Cox’s mouth, not strong enough by half to defy the request, but also not quite strong enough to meet eyes, even though he understands that’s what’s being asked of him.

A sharp inhale instead of sharp words. Cox looks startled for a second, gaze tracking down JD’s face and up again.

He unfolds his hands from each other and reaches one toward JD’s face. Brushes back the chunk of hair that JD didn’t even notice was stuck to his forehead. Note to self: tears and terrified sweat have better holding power than Surf’s Up styling paste, and what with all the salt content they smell more like the actual ocean. 

He could be their spokesperson, the official face of Tears 'n' Terror hair products. 

The flash of light off Dr. Cox’s wristwatch catches JD’s attention, brings him back from the halfhearted daydream before it gains any momentum. He watches passively as the hand wearing it withdraws, returns to Cox’s knee. As the bright shine of the watch disappears under the cuff of starchy white labcoat.

“Thank you,” says Dr. Cox.

JD doesn’t ask what for. Don’t ruin the moment, whatever the hell kind of moment it’s supposed to be.

“Could you maybe… stop… crying now?”

JD laughs, in the way that laughing and sobbing sort of roll together sometimes, and feels his eyes squeeze out a fresh wave of tears even though his eyes are too hot and raw and the salt really burns. “’S just gotta run its course,” he says. God he sounds stuffed up. He sniffs as hard as he can but hardly any air makes it through. “Not a pretty crier,” he mumbles, swiping at his nose with a sleeve. “Sorry.”

“Oh don’t you fucking _dare_ apologize to me,” he says, and yep, that sounds more like the Dr. Cox he knows and l—

Cox makes a long, exasperated noise that sounds a bit like his impersonation of an elephant. Rolls his eyes at the ceiling and shakes his head, and even with all the self-loathing prowling around JD’s head right now, he can still see plain as day that Dr. Cox is berating himself, not JD.

“Fuck it,” Cox says, and in the same breath grabs JD’s shoulder and yanks him forward, off his balance and off his knees and collapsing face-first against a warm mass that catches him completely. Panicking and disoriented, JD scrambles to push away before he gets yelled at again — one more cruel word right now and he’ll immediately code — but he can’t.

Physically can’t because he’s being held there. By actual human arms. It’s been a while, so it takes a second for him to realize it.

Also, the only other person here is _Dr. Cox,_ so even after JD realizes someone is holding him against their chest, holding him hard with no option of pulling away, he’s still more than a little confused.

His body decides that confusion is a perfectly good reason to cry harder. The arms around him tighten. There’s a chin resting on the top of his head. Half his weight is slumped in a puddle of his own urine and the other half is being fully supported by another human being and what in god’s name even _is_ this.

“You’re okay,” says Dr. Cox’s voice. 

That voice is _so, so good_ when it’s not yelling, and JD’s face is planted hard against the chest it’s coming from. He feels that voice with his skin, with his extremely closed eyelids. So nice. “You’re okay. You did good.”

JD’s elbows twitch. He wads his hands into fists to stop himself from grabbing on.

But then there’s a palm on the side of his face, warm and dry and steady. There’s a thumb sweeping across his cheekbone from nose to ear, the tip of it brushing just against the bottom edge of his shut-shut-shut eye. There’s that steady low voice, and he’s resting on that voice. “You’re okay. Good boy.”

_”Jesus,”_ JD says, and it’s the last thing he says for a while. Now that there’s a hand there to wipe his tears — and who even remembers what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that gift? — they spill over and out, all the backed-up loneliness and shame and horror that he’s been holding onto since he first walked in here as an intern… and maybe some stuff from before that, too. He’s still crying quietly, but not silently anymore. He can’t. He doesn’t know what you’d even call the stretched groaning squeals punching their way out of his pinched-shut throat.

There’s never a word for the things that hurt most.

You can’t narrate without words. If you don’t narrate a thing, you don’t process that it happened. 

So it never happened.

Except that’s wrong, isn’t it? If all the Things That Never Happened never… happened… then they wouldn’t be streaming down his face right now, getting swept away by Dr. Cox’s palm and fingers on one side, soaked into his soft blue t-shirt on the other side.

The shushing and murmuring carries on in the background, not words (actually, okay, technically words, but none that JD can make sense of), just sounds and soothing vibration. Eventually JD finds his way back from the clawing constricted agony in his chest to the sounds, to the sound of him. JD’s breathing starts to time itself to Dr. Cox’s low muttering, to the long path his hand is traveling up and down JD’s back. 

Eventually, with no warning or premeditation, JD’s body gives a huge shudder straight from the pit of what he can only assume is his sad, tattered little excuse for a soul, and the last of the cries leaves his body with a sigh.

He’s watched so many people die, now, so many of them, and he knows that sometimes it looks a lot like this.

“There you go,” Dr. Cox is saying. “That’s a good boy. Daddy’s here. You’re okay.”

JD’s ears tell him these are the same repetitive words that’ve been spoken this whole time, but until now, he hasn’t been calm enough to hear them. He blinks, lifts his head (but only a tiny bit, because once he leaves this soft, held place, he’ll probably never be allowed back in again). “…Wait, what?”

Dr. Cox’s hands come to a standstill on JD’s face and back. Oh fuck, did he break the moment? JD’s fatal flaw is his talent for breaking intimate moments by opening his mouth. 

Cox clears his throat and licks his lips, and JD knows that look. It’s the look Cox gets when he realizes he’s accidentally done or said or admitted something too _familiar_ or too _fond_ or too _feminine_ and he needs to pull a fast 180 and say something unnecessarily cruel to regain his distance from humanity.

And then the strangest thing of all happens.

Cox stares into the middle distance for a few seconds, then sighs with what might be resignation, and instead of shoving JD off and leaving him to fall in his own cold piss, he flattens his hand against JD’s jawline, fingers splayed over his ear, and turns his face upward, just a little bit more.

The kiss lands on JD’s forehead, near the temple. And it’s not like the loud pecks JD’s seen him give Jordan, awkward with obligation and quick with reluctance. It’s soft. It’s quiet. JD has time to feel the warmth of his lips.

“Look, I’m no good at this,” says Dr. Cox. “But if, y’know. If you want—“

“I want! I definitely want!” says JD. His nose is utterly stuffed and he sounds ridiculous, but then again, he’s soaked in his own pee right now. Looking and sounding ridiculous is his whole _thing._ “Yes and yes, and what the hell, one more yes for luck.” He has the front of Cox’s shirt wadded in his fist. How did that get there?

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”

“If you think I care, you really don’t know me, like, at all.”

Cox sighs, deeply and long-suffering. JD’s entire body rises and falls with the movement of his chest. (JD thinks, very briefly, about what it might feel like to lie down on top of him and just… lie there. With one hand buried in those glorious curls. Being gently lifted up and down by the power of someone else’s breath.)

“How’s about we get you into some dry clothes, whaddaya say.”

JD squints. “Yeah, my patients might have some questions if I show up drenched in urine…”

“You’re not seeing any more patients today.”

“My shift’s not done for another four hours—“

_“Newbie._ What’d I just say? You’re _not_ seeing any more patients today.”

“I can still work.”

“But you won’t. Barbie can cover you.”

Elliot will like hearing that she was the chosen one, after she stress-cries in the supply closet for ten minutes due to the added workload.

Cox begins pulling JD’s arms away, guides him to sitting with a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

JD clings to his own elbows and shivers; everything that’s wet has gone cold now, since god forbid Kelso spend the money to keep the rooms at a decent temperature. He and Cox exchange looks of simultaneous realization: the stupid machine that spits out fresh scrubs is two floors and a very long hall away.

Cox, reading JD’s mounting panic, rolls his eyes and lightly baps the side of JD’s face. “You stop that,” he says. “You’ve suffered enough. For now. Just hang tight a minute.”

He rises to his feet — JD watches, slighty jealous that he can stand so easily while JD is barely sitting up under his own power — and turns away _oh god he’s leaving!_

JD’s pulse jumps to the far extreme limit of what’s considered healthy.

But instead of leaving him alone, Cox reaches behind the paper shredder and pulls out a New York Giants-branded duffel from the corner. Props it on the edge of his rusted-out desk and roots through it until he finds a pair of track pants and a hoodie that’s the special kind of manky that hoodies only achieve when they’ve been loved and worn years beyond their natural lifespan. 

JD crabwalks away from the puddle and pulls off his ruined bottoms. The wet fabric stings when he drags it down his thighs, like a wound dressing that’s been left on for too long. His boxer-briefs go, too. They have to; they’re in the worst shape of all. They make a loud splat when he drops them on the floor.

Dr. Cox doesn’t exactly _watch,_ but he doesn’t really turn around, either. He studies the wall next to him and JD watches his ears turn red. Cox grumbles something under his breath that JD could swear sounds like “give me strength” which he must’ve heard wrong, because nobody has more strength than Dr. Cox.

The pants are soft. Before JD can think about standing up, Cox is holding out his sleeveless workout shirt (his elbow hyperextended, arm’s length arm’s length abso _lute_ ly arm’s length), the one he plays basketball in sometimes, the one JD’s had particularly impure thoughts about.

JD’s shirt is perfectly dry.

He changes it anyway. 

Cox watches this time. Growls once, quietly, mostly to himself, then offers the hoodie too.

And stares openly as JD works it over his arms and head. It’s too big, the neckline stretched, the cuffs hanging all the way to JD’s nailbeds.

“Your shift is over,” says Dr. Cox. JD doesn’t argue this time. He just stares at the offered hand, and stares more when Cox doesn’t yank it away like Lucy with the football when he reaches for it.

“I’ll bring your clothes back tomorrow,” says JD, once he’s on his feet, trying to distract himself from how much bigger his puddle looks from the higher vantage point. 

“Heard that one before,” says Cox, stuffing JD’s soiled scrubs into a plastic bag, and then that into his gym bag. “You okay to walk, kiddo?”

JD buries his hands in his armpits and nods. 

The door opens (the air in the hall feels cold, smells like ammonia and latex and old people and judgment) and as Cox turns left, JD turns right.

A hand comes down on his shoulder, reverses his direction with no effort. “Newbie, come.”

Dr. Cox walks the halls with JD’s tears on his chest like a badge.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Cox cleans up his messes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***Tags have been rewritten. Please read them before proceeding with the tale of dicks.***
> 
> **Warnings not in the tags:**  
>  • very brief implied references to past sexual trauma  
> • Gratuitous Daddy kink. Almost confrontational, very in-your-face Daddy kink. This chapter reaches a point where you will _not_ be able to ignore it or read around it.  
> • I said this in the tags but I’m saying it again: don’t like it, don’t read. **Tags are warnings. _Please_ read the tags. It won’t take long.**

No one bats an eye at either the tears on Dr. Cox’s shirt or JD’s complete costume change; when you work with patients, you get a lot of fluids on your scrubs. To the uninterested eye, the two of them must look like they’re returning from a particularly demanding bedside together. It wouldn’t be the first time. It wouldn’t be the first time this _week._

But JD’s hair is still out of place in a way he can’t describe (he hasn’t had the opportunity or the willpower to check a mirror, but it _feels_ wrong), his nose is still stuffed even if it is clearing up fast, and everyone who’s ever spent the least amount of time around medical interns (read: every last person on campus) can spot a cried-out face from a hundred paces.

Luckily, hospital culture is to mostly take such things as a given, without interfering or, really, taking any particular note at all.

JD still feels compelled to put on his Brave Face, to look like a goddamn doctor. Not like a limp med student too scared and busted-up inside to return eye contact. This is his _workplace,_ after all.

Jesus christ _this is his workplace where he just soiled himself._

He rolls the cuffs of Dr. Cox’s too-big workout hoodie around his hands, squeezes them until the ribbed material leaves indents in his palms. The hems of Dr. Cox’s also-too-big track pants get caught between JD’s heels and the floor. Every step JD takes makes shuffly noises. If he walks out into the parking lot the asphalt is going to shred the fabric. He’s mentally scripting his apology for ruining two pairs of pants in less than an hour. The script keeps going in unintentionally naughty directions.

Dr. Cox doesn’t bother glancing back at JD or even walking any slower than usual as he leads him to the elevator, to the nurses’ station. It’s not that he doesn’t care whether or not JD is keeping up; it’s that he doesn’t need confirmation of the fact.

At least, that’s what JD’s choosing to believe.

The janitor is standing outside the gift shop, two hands on his mop handle and grouchy boredom on his face. Without thinking much, JD obeys the sudden sickening tightness in his stomach, and sidesteps to put Dr. Cox more firmly between them; the edge of Cox’s labcoat flaps against JD’s lower belly.

Dr. Cox feels the snag, glances to check JD’s position. It’s the first time he’s looked at JD since they left his office, and JD’s neither surprised nor entirely sure how to feel about Dr. Cox’s easy return to his usual, flawless resting bitch face. 

Does the man _never_ experience emotional consequences? He may be jaded toward death and human suffering but surely forcing a grown man to wet his pants has gotta be unusual enough to leave _some kind_ of impression on his mood. Probably. Possibly.

Apparently not. 

Then something happens — or maybe it’s nothing. Some things are too quick or too subtle and maybe it’s just your imagination filling in the rest.

But Dr. Cox, after noticing JD’s attempt to — yes, let’s be honest — hide behind him, looks around, notices the janitor — and immediately Dr. Cox stops, squares up in front of the gigantic jerkwad, Nikes squeaking. Hands in pockets, elbows wide, stance wide, chin tilted back, and JD doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s got his Tired Cranky Alpha Wolf teeth showing. 

It goes with the Look Out He’s Gonna Bite voice.

“Jumpsuit,” he says, without biting. “Funniest story. Some brat tunneled their way outta pediatrics Shawshank-style and when he somehow inexplicably emerged in _my office_ and realized it was _nawt_ pouring theatrical rain in there, I guess he looked around and thought, ‘Gosh, what’s the point of digging your way to freedom if you don’t get to stand in the rain all dramatic-like at the end, _amirite?’_ ‘Cause damn it all to hell if the tyke didn’t decide to solve the problem by just. Pissin’ all over the fucking room and callin’ _that_ rain.” He pauses, to make room for his own god-I-hate-my-life-but-it’s-still-better-than-yours chuckle. “Ooo-kay, ya got me, I’m not actually joking. There’s human urine all over my office. Just… Just _all_ over the damn place. Why dontcha go make yourself useful.” He whistles. “Scat! Go on. Quick like a bunny.”

And, with his posture still flared wide, Dr. Cox rotates around JD as the janitor makes for the elevator. And Dr. Cox _stays_ there, like a mama buffalo shielding a fluffy little baby buffalo, until the elevator door closes again.

And JD isn’t sure if the janitor ever actually noticed him standing there the whole time.

But then Cox spins away toward the desk with a brief swipe at his nose and no change in demeanor whatsoever, leaving JD to either silently appreciate the protection or silently convince himself he imagined it.

_Someone_ has to mop up his mess. Maybe sparing JD that responsibility is the only mercy Dr. Cox intended for him. Sending the janitor packing before he got eyes on JD in his current state was just a bonus side effect.

JD doesn’t think he’d mind if that’s all it was, but he absolutely does not have the energy right now to _interpret_ Dr. Cox and god fucking dammit, why can’t he just for fucking once _tell_ JD straight-up where he stands?

“Bambi?”

JD leans around Dr. Cox and Carla’s face melts into a pity smile. “Feel better,” she says. “And don’t worry about your patients. Me and Elliot’ll take care of it.”

“Thank you, Carla,” he says, and if his confusion cracks his voice, eh, that’s okay. Apparently he’s faking sick anyway. 

“Newbie, come.”

The light outside is as bright as a hangover.

Hard to believe Dr. Cox of all people is helping him pull the ol’ Ferris Bueller. What if life was like a teen movie from the ‘80s? How _great_ would that be? Hey, didn’t one of the characters in that movie wear a Red Wings jersey…?

The wind cuts through him as if he were still wet. What gives? It’s not that cold out. He hugs his elbows, and so what if it makes him look weak and pathetic. He’s supposed to look sick, right? Also he _is_ weak and pathetic, and _someone_ around here might as well emote honestly.

“Don’t think I’m gonna let you play hooky again after this,” says Dr. Cox.

“So why now?”

“Shut up and get in the damn car.”

“You know people can see us, right?”

“Carla’s been carpooling with Kelso all week and shuffling the nurses’ pecking order around all willy-nilly. God knows why, but that’s where the news cycle’s at right now. This won’t even register.” The alarm chirps when he deactivates it. “This is nothing.”

JD hesitates next to the passenger-side door. Oh my god he’s about to make it into _The Porsche_ and why did it have to be like _this?_

There’s the Whistle. “I’m not your prom date, Newbie. If you’re waiting for me to open the door for you, I’m gonna leave without you.”

He scrambles in.

Oh sweet _jeebus_ the seat’s like _butter._

It’s sunny today and the in-dash weather display says it’s 69 out (hah, niiice), but Dr. Cox turns the heat on almost full blast and rolls up his sleeves before backing out of the spot. JD melts into the leather, still hugging his elbows, though less from cold now and more to hold his heart in place behind a ribcage that’s starting to feel less like bones and more like… dunno. Saltines? Something porous and crumbly.

God, that didn’t even make sense. His brain’s fuzzy, and it’s making his head hurt, and he’s _wasting_ his first and possibly only time inside The Porsche because all he wants to do is curl up on the seat like a stray cat who’s been out in the rain all night.

“Seatbelt,” says Dr. Cox.

JD obeys, a rote habit if ever there was one.

At the first red light, Dr. Cox bares his teeth and rolls his head around his shoulders. “Aw for god’s sake, Newbie, buck up, willya please?”

“I _did_ buckle up.”

“No, I mean stop looking like I killed your puppy and made you watch.”

“Jeez.” No emotionally thematic similarities with _what just fucking happened back there,_ no sir. You didn’t just _piss your fucking scrubs_ in front of him, while he very much _watched,_ and then been such a _girl_ about it you cried your little eyes out, and were so _pathetic_ about it that he felt sorry enough to let you do it on his shoulder _(chest)_ on his shoulder and he must think you’re having some kinda legitimate psychotic break here because he hasn’t told you yet where he’s even taking you and that most likely means he’s taking you to some kind of mental health clinic at the _least,_ because he hasn’t asked you for your address yet, and where the hell else would he take you besides home or a loony bin? You should ask him where you’re going. No wait, what if he doesn’t answer. Shit. Fuck! 

JD looks at his hands, barely visible in the wadded-up shirt cuffs. “Sorry.”

“For what, for acting like a PMSing tweenager or for drifting off for two full minutes before answering? I — I gotta be honest with ya, Newbie, I kinda drifted off my _self_ there and forgot what the _question_ was. Wait, _was_ there a question? See now you got me all turned around again. How’s a guy supposed to keep anything _straight_ with you around bein’ all…”

…Now twist the scalpel in the other direction. 

JD scoffs, shakes his head, looks blithely up at Dr. Cox’s face and knows immediately that that was a _mistake_ because now he can’t look away and can feel _exactly_ what’s about to happen. And. Once again. Can’t stop it. 

“Ya ever get tired of being such a cruel jackass all the time?” JD asks. “I mean it seems like it takes up an awful lot of energy. Isn’t, y’know. Being a _doctor_ exhausting enough already? Just somethin’ I’ve been curious about for a while now. Just _wondering.”_ And, yep, there it is… a whole new flood of tears pooling in his eyes like his head is trying to sink Noah’s fucking ark or something. And down, down they go, yep, there they go down the front of his face, wheee! Two by two hurrah hurrah.

Fuck his absolute _life._

Dr. Cox’s brows hit his receding hairline and he seems awfully confident in whatever response he’s about to spit back — but then the light turns green and, once his eye contact with JD breaks, so does his determination to say whatever jerkass thing he was about to say. His mouth flaps silently for a while, then he just wrings his hands on the wheel and growls at the road.

JD wipes his runny nose on the sleeve of the borrowed shirt in retaliation and, refolding his arms, pulling knees to chest, angles his whole body away from Dr. Cox, toward the window. Remembers crying silently, just like this, out the window of the school bus. He did it like every day from third through fifth grade. Passing scenery on the other side of smudged glass is the most comforting kind of nihilism. It’s always safe to show your tears to a boring crappy view that doesn’t give a crap about crap. Power lines and franchise outlets don’t judge.

“Newbie.”

Where the hell _are_ they, anyway? Where are they going?

And why is he still shaking?

_”Newbie.”_

“What.”

“I _said,_ do you feel cold.”

“Like you give a shit.”

“God, just answer the question, willya?”

“…Yeah.” So on top of everything else, he’s probably running a low-grade fever now. For some reason. Great.

Dr. Cox punches a button on the control panel and twists the knob as far to the right as it will go. The seat and backrest become warm, then hot. JD sinks into them, the shakes reducing to small intermittent quivers. 

“Better?”

JD grunts affirmative and grinds his teeth. The bloody spot on his inside cheek has a flavor again. 

“Newbie, hey.”

His eyes squelched shut at some point and he wants to open them so he can turn around and look at Dr. Cox. But then he’d be looking at Dr. Cox again. And his closed eyelids are the only thing holding back all those fat Ghibli tears. Not that they’re doing a bang-up job of that, but it’s the only defense he has left.

“JD.”

Oh god he’s gonna be stubborn about it.

“Say something, kid.”

No.

“C’mon.”

There’s nothing to say. 

_“JD.”_

There’s nothing at all to say to the man who dragged him down to this point and left him here to _rot._

JD startles — baps his forehead against the window, leaving a smear of mousse on the glass — stops breathing. There’s a hand on his shoulder. There’s a hand wrapped around his shoulder, palm pressed into the back of it, fingers curved over the front of it, nails nestled into the groove just above his clavicle.

The hand squeezes. Not gently, but… kindly.

“Please,” says Dr. Cox.

He turns toward the voice, not wanting to, but god yes wanting to. And he clamps his own hand down over Dr. Cox’s, holding it in place as he flips himself over on the softly creaking leather. Don’t you dare let go.

Anatomy being what it is, Dr. Cox’s hand is forced to move anyway, but instead of taking it away _oh my GOD don’t take it away from me PLEASE_ he finds a new grip near the back of JD’s neck. Just at that spot where his stethoscope usually sits.

“Look, I…” Dr. Cox takes a breath, eyes firmly on the road; JD watches his abdomen fill and deflate. “I have… sortuva… _rough time_ with. You know. Turning it… off? With _nawt_ actively being a raging asshole twenty-four seven? In. Uh. In public, especially?” He clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth, then sucks in air through them. “And I _know_ it’s been over a year since Jordan left, but god knows divorce works on a different timeline than the rest of the world, and up _until_ she left, she didn’t exactly make it _easy_ to… turn it off… even at home, and… I was never that great at it to begin with and… there’s nowhere I can really… I mean how d’you even…”

He trails off, distracted by the traffic. 

It only takes him about six seconds to signal and turn, but he needs both hands to do it, and six entire seconds of Not Being Looked At and Not Being Spoken To and Not Being Touched are more than enough to convince JD’s monkeybrain that the weight of his own existence is way too heavy for him to hold up all by himself, and it crumbles, he _becomes_ the debris he’s trapped under, his heart is gasping for oxygen, there’s no —

He’s so busy panicking for _no damn reason_ he doesn’t feel the hand return to the back of his neck at first, doesn’t even hear the voice except as echoes so faint they could be mistaken for memory.

Doesn’t realize the car’s stopped until both seatbelts are magically off and Dr. Cox has dragged JD halfway across the center console.

JD opens his eyes just in time to see Dr. Cox’s chest; two seconds later the chest is smashed against his face, or his face against it, and the arms around him are, again, not taking no for an answer.

He couldn’t fight his way out of a soggy paper bag right now, much less this.

Who’d _want_ to.

The tears fall slowly, almost sleepily. A gentle slide. Rough sobbing is what happens when fear gets into the mix, or when you fight it and lose. And JD has completely run out of fight.

“JD, _please.”_

JD hums a disinterested question.

A sigh. “Think you can make it to the door, kid?”

“Door to what.” He sits up, hands landing on Dr. Cox’s shoulders for leverage, and looks around. Tries to find a sign that’ll tell him which institution he’ll be checking into. So he’ll know what to tell Turk when JD calls to ask for his toothbrush and hair-care kit and diary and some underwear.

Dr. Cox’s apartment building looks different in the daylight. JD squints.

“Ya do recognize where we are, right?”

JD swipes at the wet in his eyes and looks again, to be sure. Nods slowly. He’s barely aware of where his own limbs are, but he’s still pretty sure he looks confused as hell.

“Would you please look at me for a minute?”

Dr. Cox’s eyes are the kind of blue that’s usually painful to look at. Usually. Right now they’re… softer, more grey, and very, very close. And surrounded by stress. His ten-hour stubble looks like a weapon compared to those pillowy curls on top. He has a smell that JD can’t classify.

“I dunno if you’ve noticed but I’m _nawt…_ actually… a very nice person.”

JD wants to snort, but can’t find the power to do much of anything besides keep staring. Dr. Cox doesn’t often look… like this, what’s the word? Whatever it is, it’s hypnotic.

“But if there’s one thing that I genuinely… y’know, _like_ about… myself… it’s that I tend to finish what I start. And look, you’ve been. A.” Deep inhale. “More-acceptable-than-usual intern, so y— _dammit,_ Perry, get your shit together, you’re a disgrace. Okay, look, Newbie, you’re a _goddamn fantastic_ intern and a damn fine human being under all that hair product and terrible _Cosmo_ advice and god knows you’ve earned yourself the right to a little praise, and for whatever reason you’ve been cursed to want it from _me_ so. I guess that kinda makes it my responsibility to see sure thatcha get it.”

_Earnest._ That’s the word. Jesus.

Oh no why is that so hot.

“You’re a good boy, JD.”

ohgod

“And you’re comin’ with me.”

It’s a minute or so before JD recovers from his whiteout to find himself curled up like a comma and breathing through his mouth. His hands, still on Dr. Cox’s shoulders, are claws. Dr. Cox’s hands, gentle but unyielding on either side of JD’s waist, are holding him together. JD’s unmentionables… wet. Wet hot heavy burning rubbing grinding down hard into Dr. Cox’s lap.

Dr. Cox tries to suck air in through his teeth but his jaw isn’t gritted anymore and it turns into a sloppy gasp. “Easy there. Down, soldier. Think of the upholstery. Feel like you can walk?”

“Mm-hm!” Squeaky.

“Good boy.” oh _god_ “Over here. Back in your seat. I’ll get the door.”

_if you’re waiting for me to open the door for you I’m gonna leave without you_

JD’s back hits the passenger seat hard — gravity’s axis tilts. In the time it takes Dr. Cox to walk around the car and reach JD’s door, recent threats and unfolding action to the contrary have locked horns. JD isn’t crying anymore — the door’s already open and Dr. Cox’s hands are on his body guiding him carefully out into the world — but the _confusion._ The _conf—_

He can’t deal with. He can’t deal with anything. Right now.

His face feels too exposed. He hides it in one elbow. His fingers brush the edge of the hood lying limp across his shoulders and he pulls it up, over, deep over his forehead. Makes a little shadow for his face to hide in. It’s not enough. The sun’s still finding his face and it’s too warm, too bright, he can’t make his eyes open for more than a second.

He doesn’t know he’s been walking until Dr. Cox’s hands tell him to stop and he hears a key working a jiggly door lock. 

The shade inside instantly drops him from too warm back into chilly again. The hall is carpeted. He always forgets the hall is carpeted.

Dr. Cox’s apartment is only one floor up. There’s a stairwell to the left. JD’s eyes still won’t open but he knows it’s there. Hell, he knows exactly how the handrail feels under his sliding palm. But Dr. Cox leads him away from the stairwell. 

The electric hum and slow deep whoosh of air hissing out through rubber seals, and an elevator is on its way to fetch them.

“Stairs don’t sound like the best idea rightaboutnow,” Dr. Cox mutters. “‘Sides, I’m tired.”

JD must black out for a minute because now Dr. Cox is gently shoving him into the apartment, after waiting — in vain — for JD’s feet to take the first step inside on their own. His feet are fresh out of boldness for today.

“Take your shoes off,” says Dr. Cox, heading toward the kitchen with his own shoes still scuffing along the floor. JD steadies his balance by leaning his butt against the wall and manages to obey without falling over.

Then stays by the door, socks on the front mat. The hardwood looks slippery, and if the walls are tilting sideways he probably shouldn’t walk on slippery things. His ankle itches. There’s still half-dry piss in his sock cuffs.

Dr. Cox comes back holding a glass of water. He stops at the far edge of the room, tilts his head at JD, closes his eyes and does that rattly “exasperated” sigh that JD _always_ recognizes as a put-on, in any state of mind.

“Lose the sweatshirt.”

Its large size is probably the only reason JD doesn’t get stuck or tangled in the rushed process. The shirt falls to the floor, on top of his shoes.

Dr. Cox is standing very close by the time JD’s task is complete. “Good boy,” and _why_ is there a sizzling firework launching up JD’s spine and detonating just behind his heart every time Dr. Cox says those words, and now JD is holding the glass of water with both hands.

He squints down at the glass. Don’t drop it. Both hands. Don’t drop it. Don’t drop it. It’s cold, its icy sweat leaks between his fingers and rolls across his knuckles. Don’t drop it. A drip plats on the hardwood between his feet, eight miles below.

“Drink it.” 

It scours his throat and gives him brain freeze. The pain brings a sense of physical balance. An imperfect sense, but better than none. JD holds onto the pain. Dr. Cox told him to do this and that means the pain is Important, is a lesson, will make him a better doctor and a better man and a good b—

When he drains the last of the glass he makes a face and shakes his head as though it’d been hard liquor.

Cox moves to take the glass back; it takes JD a few seconds to puzzle out that those hands are trying to do anything besides touch his. More touching would be good. Touch _on purpose_ next time maybe, please? 

“Attaboy,” says Dr. Cox, pitched just loud enough to hear. JD shivers. “I’m gonna go to the bedroom for a minute. Just for a minute, mmkay? Now look over there for me. See that blanket on the back of the couch? When I get back from the bedroom in about a minute I wanna see you kneeling, on that couch, wearing that blanket. Nothing else. Just the blanket. Think you can manage that, Newbie?”

JD scowls blankly at the couch, then nods.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Yes, Dr. Cox.”

Dr. Cox swipes his nose and folds his arms tight across his chest. 

_No oh crap what’d I do wrong_ now?

Dr. Cox leans his ear in, one finger propped delicately behind it. “Yes _who now?”_

And JD knows. He _knows_ the word Dr. Cox is looking for. Hell, Dr. Cox _told_ him as much back at the hospital, didn’t he? 

But wasn’t that half-imagined? Or half-remembered? Or otherwise only half-real? And in _any_ case at least half-crazy?

Dr. Cox growls and grabs the front of JD’s t-shirt (ok well, his _own_ t-shirt, but that’s definitely _JD’s_ back feeling the pressure of the pulled fabric and _JD’s_ chest that Dr. Cox is grinding his knuckles into). _“Say it,_ you insufferable tease.”

JD’s eyes open and, for a minute, they stay open. 

“Yes, Daddy,” he says.

Instead of letting go, Dr. Cox pulls harder, pulls him closer, drags his socks stumbling off the mat and lays his other hand across JD’s cheek (JD flinches, but the touch is gentle, is bedside-manner warm). “There’sa boy.”

JD feels his mouth fall open in a pleased grin, lazy and sideways. Hears himself make a stupid noise. Vaguely notes the bones in his arms turning into floppy rubber.

He leans his head forward and rests his brow in the pocket between Dr. Cox’s neck and shoulder. Displaces the gentle hand from his cheek in the process, and the hand makes itself a new home across JD’s nape. Oh god that’s good.

The face of Dr. Cox’s watch feels smooth and clean against that spot just under JD’s ear.

“Gotta give it to ya there, I mean. Gotta admit. It. You…? I _really_ like seeing you like this.”

JD’s grin widens sleepily and he snuggles his face deeper into Very Nice Shoulder. “Nnnn… thank you, Daddy.” (A flicker of lucidity, just enough to think _Oh hey, I really said that out loud. Twice. And he really liked it. Twice. Huh…_ And then it’s gone.)

The grip on his nape tightens as Dr. Cox takes a steeling breath — ribcage rises slightly to bap the tip of JD’s nose — and then Dr. Cox is sidestepping, steering JD gradually toward the couch.“What is it that I’m always telling you,” says Dr. Cox, softly. “Do your job, Newbie.”

JD blindly offers a thumbs-up as he shuffles across the living room. “Couch. Blankie. Nakie. ‘M on it.”

“See to it thatcha are. I’ll see you in a minute.”

JD hums a dorky laugh. “See a lot _more_ ’a me.”

“Yer damn right I will.”

The edge of the area rug gives JD’s toes a bit of trouble, but he reaches the sofa before his legs give up. The track pants seem eager to be off his body — ohh, right, no underwear, hahahohhh man this upholstery feels _fantastic_ — but the t-shirt is more complicated, makes an alarming ripping sound as he claws it off. God no.

He holds it in his hands, turning it over, searching for a popped seam. He can fix it. He knows how to sew, kinda. Turk _definitely_ knows how to sew so this can _definitely_ be fixed, he just has to find the—

Wait.

Wait no. Job.

He places the wadded shirt on the next cushion over, to deal with later, and examines his haphazard sprawled legs, formulates a course of treatment to get them from where they are to where they’re supposed to be: kneeling. 

It takes some doing.

Proper kneeling, once achieved, raises most of his body precariously higher than the back of the couch. His center of gravity wobbles over the unsteady surface, and he lowers himself, sits on his feet, pressed-together knees pointing toward that one flattened seat cushion just left of center where Dr. Cox does his drinking and his… sports…ing.

The blanket — even in his temporary stupidity, JD knows perfectly well it’s an _afghan_ thankyouverymuch — the afghan is soft (and softly stained) woven white cotton with fringe all around. His skin likes it. He pulls it across his shoulders and drapes the loose corners over his unmentionables, tucks his hands into the edges and pulls it shut across his chest like a cloak and _jesus it smells like him…_

He doesn’t know how long Dr. Cox has been watching him but, when he lifts his head and unearths his face from the softness of the afghan and blinks the haze away, the gaze on him has already become like solid matter.

Solid as arms around him.

JD smiles, slowly, and gladly lets himself be held by it.

Would gladly be held by a lot more.

Dr. Cox swallows. Audibly, even from partway across the room. “Do you have any idea what it is you do to me.”

JD shakes his head.

“Well then I’d like to show you.”

JD drops his cheek to his shoulder and hikes the edge of the afghan halfway up over his face (feels a draft on his now-exposed upper thigh), too shy to show Dr. Cox a smile like _this,_ whatever “this” is. His face feels like it’s in a strange shape and he doesn’t know who he looks like right now, and that’s a little scary when you think about it.

Bare feet close the distance between them and Dr. Cox guides JD’s face out of the afghan to rest against Cox’s sternum. How did JD not notice that Dr. Cox stripped bare from the waist up? He presses his cheek into soft hair and hard abs and just that hint of older-man paunch that no number of hours in Sacred Heart’s gym can banish. 

Then a finger under his chin turns his face up.

“Don’t you dare hide a smile like that from me, Newbie,” he says, but JD’s grin already slipped. He tries to bring it back but his mouth just twitches. Cox sighs. “Starting _now_ and for the rest of today, I _absolutely forbid_ you to hide your face from me,” he says.

JD blinks, slowly. Dumbly.

“Understand?”

He nods.

The hand gentling through his hair clamps down suddenly. Harsh. Yanks his head back. Cox leans in and there’s no escape from the two inches of space between their noses. “I _said_ do you understand, Newbie?” He doesn’t flinch at JD yelping or JD panting with pain straight into his face. His curls rustle under JD’s breath.

_“Yes_ Daddy!”

The pain vanishes but the grip does not. _“Good_ Newbie,” and JD’s never heard That Voice in that way before, like all the heat and strength and insanity of the Santa Anas lives in this man’s lungs, and

And now pouring into him, kissing him.

It’s not light or grazing, but there’s still a hesitation, some question as to whether Dr. Cox is fully committed to it yet. An angry mouth trying to relearn the basics of kindness. Searching for a soft place to land, but JD’s whole mouth is soft (and he’s long since committed to making sure it _stays_ that way), and JD’s lips represent a lot of real estate to choose from.

Cox kisses him so intently he might as well be grunting _Mine_ each time, but — each time he only stays a moment, pulls away, comes back searching out a different angle, a different point of focus. Changing his mind a few seconds later. JD thinks the phrase _hesitation marks_ but, yikes, why is he being so _dire_ because after all _Dr. Cox is kissing him and he is naked in Dr. Cox’s living room—_

Dr. Cox pulls back in a way that feels depressingly final; JD tries to lean in after him but is stopped by two hands heavy on his blanketed shoulders _don’t change your mind already, please jeez just, I’m right here please don’t stop I need_

“What’s my name,” says Dr. Cox.

JD startles, then snickers even though he knows he shouldn’t. Seriously? What a line.

“Newbie, look at me.”

He does and _oh god_ Dr. Cox _never_ looks this messed up while sober. Messed up, but — like in the car, like —  _earnest,_ again.

“JD. Didja go off somewhere again?”

“No.” Why would he leave _this?_

“Are you still narrating?”

Ah. “Kinda.”

“Well could you _stop?”_

JD squints into the middle distance. “Not sure,” he says. “Prob’ly not.”

“Can’tcha at least cut to the window or something?”

“Doesn’t really work like that, but if—”

Dr. Cox cuts him off with a handwave and then rubs at his left eyebrow like there’s a headache hiding somewhere in there. “Okay okay… Well then riddle me this, boy wonder: in your, ah… narration, here. What’s my name? I mean what’re you calling me in your head _right now?”_

Confused again (confused _still,_ really), JD peers up at Dr. Co— oh. “Dr. Cox,” he says, rubbing his knuckles together under the afghan.

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s what you said to call you,” says JD. “Day one.”

Dr. Cox’s hand drops away from his face, and so does the quickly mounting frustration buried behind his brow. Understanding moves in to take its place, followed by the kind of look that JD’s so constantly hungry for he never fails to recognize it, no matter who’s wearing it: 

Fondness.

“I did do, huh,” says Dr. Cox. He shifts himself closer on the couch, one knee pressing between JD’s. “And you’ve been a damn good boy all year, haven’tcha, following at least _one_ of my instructions every single day, even in your own fluffy head. Looks like someone’s a shoe-in for Santa’s ‘nice’ list this year.”

It’s April, but JD lets himself enjoy the feeling of glowing, and wiggling, and tingling so much he has to let his fingers dance.

“Now listen up, mister, ‘cause here’s a new order and I wantcha to be damn sure you follow through on it. Ya listening?”

“Yes sir.” 

“From now until we’re done, if you and I are alone together — es- _special-_ ly if you’re naked — I want you to do your level best to stop narrating. And _if you can’t,_ if you try your little heart out but _just can’t,_ you’ll damn well do me the courtesy of _nawt_ calling me by my hospital name, y’hear? Not even in your own head.”

JD breathes out, softly, through his mouth. _First-name basis?!_ He’s gotta call Turk and scream about this for like four hours straight!

_“Nor_ will you call me what my ex-wife calls me. Which means no first name,” says Dr…. Per… says… him. 

Oh.

“There’s only _one_ word I wanna hear _or see_ you matching to _my_ face right now. Understand, boy?”

_Understand, boy?_ Understand. Boy. Yes. 

_…Yes._

“Out loud, kiddo.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Good boy.”

This is… really happening, oh god. JD’s brain slips out through some tiny hidden gap in the back of his skull and floats just above and behind his head like a balloon. Daddy’s hand rises to the back of JD’s neck and holds onto the end of the balloon’s string.

JD’s eyes close on their own and he floats. 

Floating leaves no room for proprioception or equilibirum so he doesn’t know he’s sinking forward until the top of his head comes to rest in the center of Daddy’s chest. There’s a heartbeat in his scalp, echoing drumlike through his recently vacated skull.

“Therrre we go,” says Daddy, “yeah,” and it sounds even better than when Bob Ross says it. Daddy’s hand smooths down and up his nape. “There’s a good Newbie.”

Newbie’s knees shuffle to get him closer to the center of Daddy’s warmth. Something about this seems… difficult to believe, but hell if he can remember why, or why he should give a crap. 

Daddy’s knee shoves deeper between his, splitting Newbie’s thighs farther apart. Daddy leans forward and his chest presses Newbie’s resting head backward; Daddy’s shoulder comes to bear on the rest of him, pushing forward, easing him back. Afghan edges still in hand, Newbie reaches for Daddy’s neck with both arms, seeking anchor and finding it. He holds on and tries to keep his nails out of Daddy’s skin while Daddy keeps urging him backwards into blind unbalanced space, until the world’s upended and his spine meets something soft and weight-bearing.

He still doesn’t let go.

Daddy takes advantage of Newbie’s occupied hands to run palms over Newbie’s shoulders and chest, and sides, and hips (a short rough possessive squeeze), and belly, then up again. Newbie’s nervous system doesn’t know what to do with all this; his body arches and rises up toward Daddy’s traveling hands and back down again in strange curves, trying to keep as much of his body as _touched_ as possible. 

Daddy’s hand splays on the center of his chest and presses firmly down. Newbie gets control of the weird slow writhing and holds still. (His hips rise and fall in protest, just once, feeling nothing but overwashed woven cotton and the cruelly distant suggestion of another warm human body just on the other side of the fabric.) The fingertips of Daddy’s other hand trickle up his throat and catch under the point of his chin; Newbie’s face tilts up, and up, and up, his whole body working on its own to chase the touch of fingers, to keep the pressure on his skin consistent even though such decisions are out of his hands now, and well in Daddy’s.

He forces his eyes open, because he doesn’t know where he is. The back of the sofa looms high in the background like a mountain; much closer, Daddy’s staring at him with black eyes (near-full black, like an eclipse apiece, like a cat desperate to pounce, like—) and a looseness in his mouth and face. Seems he’s forgotten to be angry.

What would you call that look on his face? Rapt? Religious?

Ravenous?

Not that word choice matters, if nobody’s narrating.

Newbie lets his eyes shut again. Too tiring to keep them open, and _that’s_ one sight too much to take in. He swallows, and the embarrassment gets stuck in his throat.

“My god, Newbie. Why didn’t ya ever tell me you could look like this?”

He’s not sure how to answer — gets that _jabbed_ sort of feeling he gets when he doesn’t know the answer at rounds, and in desperation finally folds his elbows over his forehead, covering his entire face with blanket.

Which is the Wrong Answer, apparently.

_“Hey.”_ Daddy claws the fabric away from Newbie’s face, rips it right out of his grasp. “What’d I tell you?” says Daddy. 

Newbie’s eyes don’t just open; they go wide and start stinging and _how is he still hydrated enough to water up?_

“What did I _just_ say to you, Newbie?”

He opens his mouth to answer, but still doesn’t _have_ an answer.

“Think, Newbie. What’d I say about your face?”

…Oh. “Right,” Newbie mumbles.

“Well?”

“No hiding.”

“And what did you just do?”

“…Hid.”

“So you understand. Now look at the position you’ve put me in here, Newbie.”

He looks. Daddy’s chest is flushed. His jaw is still relaxed. He’s not mad, not really.

“I gotta punish you for that now, _yanno?_ I was kinda hopin’ _nawt_ to do that today, kiddo, I really was. God knows you’ve been through enough hell for one day already. But ya just…” He sighs. “God save me, Newbie, but you just aren’t potty-trained yet. Dunno where I dropped the ball on that, but I’m damn well gonna get to work fixin’ that _right_ now.”

Newbie starts to raise a hand to his stinging eyes — catches himself at the last second, lowers his hand again.

“That’s more like it,” says Daddy. “Good boy.”

He feels a smile squirm across his mouth.

Daddy groans a small noise that sends a jolt down through the pit of Newbie’s lower half. “I’m not mad,” Daddy says. “You’re a very good Newbie. But Daddy needs to make sure you _stay_ that way.”

“Yes, Daddy,” mumbles Newbie.

Daddy tugs gently at the afghan. The fabric pulls tight around Newbie’s shoulders, around his back, squeezing him by increments toward Daddy’s center of gravity.

Center of _all_ gravity, period. Moon around Earth. Earth around sun. Electron around proton.

“What kinda teacher would I be if I didn’t teach you a lesson when you need one,” says Daddy, but it doesn’t sound like a question, or even a threat. He pulls on the edges of the afghan hard enough to lift Newbie an inch or two off the couch, brings his face close. “Do you wanna be a good boy for Daddy?”

Newbie nods so hard his neck cracks like stiff knuckles.

“You wanna take your punishment like a good boy?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Another kiss — again too short — and it breaks when Daddy lets him fall and bounce onto cushion again. Before Newbie can find his limbs after the soft shock, Daddy’s folding Newbie’s confused arms up against his chest and wrapping the afghan around him, pulling it snug in every direction. Newbie watches his hands work in mute fascination, hoping in the back of his head to get hurt real bad sometime so he can lie on a bed at Sacred Heart and be treated by _those hands_ in front of everyone. They look bigger from this angle than they do when he’s standing behind Dr. Cox’s shoulder looking down. They’re bigger when they work on _you._

“This oughta be good enough to keep your hands away from your face,” says Daddy, tucking in the corners of the blanket burrito around Newbie’s waist and shoulders, then bringing both hands up to Newbie’s face, palming his jaw, brushing misbehaving hair away from his eyes, trailing a soft thumb across his chin and bottom lip. “And your _goddamn_ puppy-dog eyes, _fuck.”_

Newbie hums and turns his head to nuzzle stupidly into Daddy’s hand — which disappears immediately.

“Excuse you,” says Daddy. “You’re being _punished,_ boy.”

“Really,” snickers Newbie.

“Oh, that does it.”

Daddy yanks him up to sitting, grabs the back of his hair in a fist, throws him face first toward the far end of the couch. Pinned arms means no balance and Newbie falls; the grip on his hair tightens, _hurts “Agh!”_ but stops his face from crashing nose-first into the armrest.

He turns his head to one side, face toward the back of the couch — _face the corner and think about what you’ve done_ — and way up there, past Newbie’s shoulder and way, way up in the sky, in the very corner of Newbie’s field of vision, Daddy’s gaze is traveling comfortably down the length of Newbie’s back. 

A warm hand on the back of Newbie’s bare thigh makes him startle, and suddenly he’s aware of the breeze on his ass. His ass which is now propped up in the air.

And he’s aware of Daddy’s lap supporting his resting hips.

And of the pressure of his own weight against Daddy’s thighs — one thigh in just about The Right Spot ohgod don’t squirm, the other settled deep in Newbie’s lower abdominal soft tissue and telling him in no uncertain terms that he _has to pee again ohgod DON’T. SQUIRM._

“Listen up, Newbie.”

Newbie tries to grunt; it comes out a squeak.

“I’m not gonna ask you to keep count ‘cause, frankly, I don’t have much faith in your math skills right now. And I just, mmm…” He bobbles his head side to side in ‘thought’. “I just don’t feel like it.” 

The hand feeling out the shape of Newbie’s hamstrings slides up over his ass with — what _is_ this — the lightest, most fingertippy touch. Almost tickly. 

Daddy stems Newbie’s ticklish squirming by laying his other hand against Newbie’s spine, low, behind hips, his thumb just grazing the top of Newbie’s crack. Hands gently wake up his skin.

Newbie pushes against the encasing afghan but all he can do is shift his right elbow back and forth about an inch.

“So, screw counting,” Daddy says — it takes Newbie a minute to connect this with what he was saying before. “I’m just gonna spank the daylights outta this aggravatingly plush ass of yours until whenever I feel like stopping.” Fingertips turn to fingernails for a second; Newbie shivers and heroically Does Not Yelp.

“You have three jobs here. Now listen up Newbie because if I have to repeat any of _these,_ ohh — you’ll be in _real_ trouble, mister. Are you listening?”

Newbie gulps in air, then nods.

“Good boy. First job: stay where I fucking put you. I can already tell you’re the kinda brat who wants to buck himself right off my lap onto the floor, and that just ain’t gonna fly here, kiddo. Second job: don’t fucking _hide_ from me. Not your face, not your voice, not anything. If you need to scream, I wanna hear it. You blush, I wanna see it. You got something to say, I damn well expect you to say it. And what does a good Newbie say if he needs to stop?”

“Red balloon,” says Newbie, because a long time ago, someone whose last name he’s forgotten and whose cheap imported riding crop broke in half against his thighs thought it’d sound cute, and…

“Of course. Perfect. Good boy, Newbie.”

And Daddy saying those words and Daddy’s hands alternating between soft fingers and sharp nails across his ass — Newbie chuckles low to himself, because he’s already forgotten what it is he said or did to deserve such _nice_ things.

“For your third job, you’ll _thank_ me when I decide we’re done with punishment.” He pats Newbie’s ass. “You got all that, Newbie? Or do you need me to find you a big ol’ crayon so you can scrawl a reminder note all over my living room wall like the disaster baby you are?”

“Nn. Yes Daddy.”

“Yes Daddy what?”

“Yes, Daddy, I understand, thank you?”

“Good boy,” and _smack!_ the first one lands without warning or — oh jesus he’s — Newbie makes himself close his parted teeth, because it’s not like it _hurt_ it was just _sudden_ and _whack POW_ two more blows before he can finish squirming his way to a less startled angle on Daddy’s lap.

Leave it to Daddy to start him off with a suckerpunch. Jerk.

“You’re scowling, Newbie,” Daddy remarks. “You got somethin’ to com _plain_ about?” and brings his hand down _solid_ mid-word, and then again right after, and Newbie’s trying not to count so it’s either four or five more before Daddy pauses. Four or five hard _smacks,_ not slaps.

Newbie grimaces and rubs the side of his face back and forth against the couch cushion, says nothing. Groans low in his throat — or high in his chest, can’t tell.

A soft hand trails up the skin on Newbie’s ass, making him jump-startle worse than if it’d been another blow. “That’s what I thought.”

Newbie’s hips squirm back and forth across Daddy’s thighs, and a whimper of humiliating pitch squirms out from his mouth.

_“Ohh,”_ Daddy intones, “poor Newbie. I didn’t say you could move yet.”

“Not… _ffff_ not movin’.”

“Really.”

Another strike, quick and stinging and maybe ‘playful’. Newbie chokes on his gasp.

“Let’s just make _sure_ then, shall we.”

Daddy’s free hand tightens its hold on Newbie’s hip, presses him down harder against the thigh that rises up slightly to meet him. (Deeper pressure on his bladder. Does Daddy know…?) Newbie can’t quite see from here, but it feels like his ass is even more exposed than before. He moans a low _weh_ of frustration, rubs the knobs of his knees together. His butt’s on _fire_ and he’s not even allowed to _move?_ Mean!

One especially lazy smack slaps the thought right out of him.

He feels scratchy warmth where Daddy’s belly presses into him, then a sudden blast of warmwet breath on his skin and —  _TEETH those are teeth_ and Daddy’s spanking him again, bite over, already by the time Newbie gets out a proper yelp.

The next fast smacks capitalize on Newbie’s yelp-in-progress. He hears himself tripping on a scream, more than he can hear the sharp slaps on his ass, and he is _not_ doing this on purpose and he _doesn’t care._

He loses track of time. And everything that normally attaches to time.

Then he comes back in a moment of charged silence.

His own harsh breath in his ears. The sensation of _presence_ in the air somewhere near, maddeningly invisible, like the lightning that hasn’t struck yet but you can still feel, like the looming stormcloud it lives in, deep blue and beautiful and dangerous.

A sudden, terrible realization, as Daddy pauses to shake out his wrist and tease Newbie’s skin with another cruel caress that makes his whole body jump: 

_He’s just warming up._

“Damn right I am,” says Daddy. _Shit, was that out loud?_ “Yes, and so was that.” _Fuck._ “That’s the plan. _If_ you can take the rest of your punishment like a good little Newbie.”

“Uh-huh,” he manages. It’s harder to talk when he’s talking on purpose. He tests his arms against the blanket burrito, just to find the edges of his own body. Wishes he had something to hold onto besides his own armpits.

Daddy plants a possessive (protective?) hand firm on his ass and leans low over his back, gets his mouth right up to Newbie’s upturned ear. “Daddy’s gotcha, Newbie. Nnn’kay? You’re finally _exactly_ where I want you and I’m not lettin’ you go _anywhere_ so don’t even worry about trying.”

Newbie tries to answer but all that comes out is a protracted noise that travels through too many forms — moan, whine, sigh, desperate whimper — to be called any one thing.

Daddy shakes his head, once, as if to clear it. _”Gorgeous,”_ he says, and before Newbie can express his confusion over the compliment, he’s too busy grunting and crying out under the not-quite-rhythmic onslaught of Daddy’s relentless hand.

Daddy’s hand is a hand that Means Business is a force of nature is

The newbie-boy… shit, doesn’t he have a name…? He struggles to open his eyes after some kind of whiteout, discovers his mouth is full of couch upholstery. Bites down harder. It doesn’t have a taste. His teeth need something to hold onto. His hands need something to hold onto. Only his teeth are free to hold onto anything.

He shoves forward teeth-first and strengthens his hold on the upholstery. He’ll chew a hole in the couch like a naughty puppy, just as soon as he gets enough time between spankings to think _how…_

Daddy’s hand leaves no room for thought.

Hold on with your teeth because it’s all you can do.

Use your teeth like a naughty stupid puppy who piddles on the floor.

The tension in Newbie’s body gradually redisperses. He loses track of where it goes, where it ends up. He’s not trying to evade the blows anymore.

Hypothermia: eventually you stop shivering, then you just… lie down… drift…

His ass is numb. Impact thunders down into his hidden bones, into deep-tissue muscle that’ll make walking a trial tomorrow. He wonders if he’ll bruise.

He hopes he’ll bruise.

Daddy’s talking again but Newbie can’t hear words.

A short pause, just enough for a breath. WHAM _wow_ that one _landed!_

Another pause follows it; the pain flares a few seconds later, spreading through his nerves like sparks from a campfire spreading into the sky, becoming stars.

“Clearly not,” Daddy mutters to himself. _“Pay attention,_ Newbie.”

Newbie has to drop his mouthful of sofa to form the wordshapes _yes. daddy._ with his dry empty cottonmouth. He can’t hear it, can’t tell if he croaks it or whispers or just lip-syncs it.

Whatever he does earns him a quietly growled _good boy_ and another _WHAM_ and um…

…yeah _okay_ that’s where all the tension in his body went. He can feel it coiled up in his shoulders-elbows-wrists, straining against the inside of the afghan and, god, how _ridiculous_ is he that a _blanket burrito_ is enough to do the same job as cross-ties and chains. 

But what _can_ still move, despite Daddy’s right hand still pushing down on his lowest back, are his hips. And… they are. They are _moving._ That’s where the rest of his energy is. Not trying to get away from Daddy’s spankings, no no that’s not even possible, but leaning into the edges of Daddy’s hard thighs, grinding thirstily down on one, squeezing his bladder against the other, back and forth between two immovable objects positioned with startling precision for maximum torture — now you gotta pee, now you’re teasing yourself, now you gotta pee, now you’re trying to get friction where you Need it, now you gotta pee _worse,_ now you need to come and _can’t —_

— and Daddy only likes the _really really hard_ spanks now, and when his hand comes down Newbie’s hips STOP for a second Newbie can’t even control whether his breath is coming or going — is it a gasp? is it a scream? _Spin the wheel and let’s find out! Everybody’s a winner!_

_“Newbie!”_

Why’s he yelling? Newbie’s eyes sting behind their feeble shut lids. Why’s he getting yelled at? What’d he _do?_

“Just where in the hell d’you think you’re _going,_ Newbie? What—” _wham_ “—did—“ _whap!_ “—Daddy—“ _POW_ “—SAY about that?!”

Newbie tries to tuck his fists up under his chin but, y’know. Can’t. Tears roll sideways — the wrong way — find their way to the slobbery upholstery and soak in.

“If you can’t go into subspace without _also_ drifting _completely_ off into some cotton-candy fantasy land, then you won’t get to _go_ into subspace.”

Subspace? Like _Star Trek?_

Daddy takes a breath so deep it seems to shift the entire couch.

“You can drift, boy,” says Daddy, more calmly. “But you gotta drift _with Daddy,_ okay? You gotta hold onto _somethin’,_ kiddo. Might as well be me. I’m right here, yanno?”

Newbie swallows dryly and nods. No idea what he’s agreeing with. Has to go potty _real real bad._ Doesn’t care what he has to agree with to keep Daddy touching him. Doesn’t care how Daddy chooses to touch him. Only cares that _touching._

Daddy chooses more spanking.

Newbie bites the couch again with a whiny sob, can only get a tiny bit of fabric just pinched between his front teeth. Cries and snots and makes crackledy groans around it, limp from the waist up and the thighs down, hips still trying to wedge themselves between Daddy’s thighs, desperate to come and desperate to pee-and-also-not-pee, and his bare ass is propped up higher than any of the rest of him and it belongs to Daddy so Daddy can look at it or hit it all he wants and.

…It’s a minute before Newbie realizes that his breathing has stopped. And hips have stopped. And spanking has stopped, Daddy’s hands no longer blunt instruments but soft-tipped talons digging each into Newbie’s hamstring and left asscheek. A weighty relief from some of his desperation.

And

and and and

Daddy’s thighs were _not_ wet before.

Newbie isolates and diagnoses the issue just as its trickle slows and stops.

He half-lifts his head in alarm; bleary, it wobbles and he sets it down against the cushion again almost immediately. His tongue sweeps his lips but is so dry it doesn’t make a difference. “Daddy,” Newbie whispers. “Daddy I had an accident.”

“…I know, kiddo.”

Daddy sounds glitched.

Knowing full well he _shouldn’t,_ it’s disrespectful, but goddammit it’s _funny_ — Newbie giggles. “I wet _your_ pants,” he says. And, just to prove the point to himself, lets his hips rock forward and back again, testing the pressure against his bladder — yep, empty — and then grinding back down hard twisting seeking _shameless_ against Daddy’s inner thigh. Squelchy pants, already feeling prickly against Newbie’s naked parts, but still warm and still _Daddy_ and anyway it’s not like he can help it.

If he didn’t notice Daddy’s cock all hard and warm and pressed up against him before, it sure is there now.

For a beat, nothing happens. Just mutual breathing, and liquid settling into place within fabric fibers or cracks in the hardwood.

Then, everything happens at once.

Daddy yanks Newbie upright and turns him around and pulls him into Daddy’s splashy lap, blanket burrito and all, and Daddy’s arms find their way around Newbie’s back and under his bare numb-sore-throbbing-burning-prickling ass, and Daddy’s on his feet moving through the apartment and Newbie is just… there, against his chest in his arms along for the ride _oh my god I can’t move my arms and he’s_ carrying _me_

The motions of Daddy’s walking turn Newbie’s head in dizzy circles, freewheeling zero-G and who cares where the floor is anyway.

Oo, walk-in shower, fancy. 

Daddy twists to reach the shower handle without putting Newbie down. Pulls his watch off with his _teeth hhhoh wow_ and sticks his hand in the water a few times before steam starts to soften the edges on everything. Then just. Steps in. Pants and afghan and all.

Newbie’s naked feet touch the shower floor — still cold, getting hot fast. Once his balance is stable Daddy slides the glass door shut behind them and crowds Newbie up against the tiles to start unwrapping the soggy blanket burrito. 

Is the steam coming from the water, or from Daddy’s breath? His eyes are too intense to look at. Newbie shuts his own eyes and angles his face under the water. Tilts his head back to feel the trickles work their way through his hair product and run down his scalp in tingly little rivers. This doesn’t count as hiding his face, right? Water is see-through. Daddy doesn’t complain, anyway.

The afghan falls loose and collapses to the shower floor, a soft heavy thud on and around Newbie’s feet, as limp and sopping and overwarm as he feels. He pulls his face back from the stream and looks down at his pale chicken ankles jutting straight up out of the little hill of soaked white fabric.

He feels like Charlie Brown’s bedraggled christmas tree swaddled in Linus’ deeply loved blanket. 

The thought makes his eyes mist — or is that the steam? He looks up, finds his field of vision filled with the scope of Daddy’s bare shoulders, with arms erecting _(ha, you said “erecting”)_ a soft cage around him.

The water bounces off Daddy’s curls — curls them tighter — and as it soaks into the side of Daddy’s pants it weighs them down, drags them down by the edge, waistband half-cocked and now his underwear is clinging everywhere it can and Newbie can’t do anything but watch this happen with his back pressed to the cold-turning-hot tiles because Daddy’s hands are on the outside of his arms, stroking him shoulder to elbow to shoulder to neck, and that’s as good as a blanket burrito or cross-ties or a _don’t move_ whispered against his throat.

Newbie braces the back of his knee against the little built-in soap shelf jutting from the tiles, and presses the back of his skull against the tile for balance, and stares at Daddy’s mouth (blowing each breath out slowly, deliberately, gentling himself), and stares at Daddy’s one bared hip, and stares at Daddy’s waistband (still snagged on the other hip, the other side of the waistband stretched down to his thigh now)… oh… Daddy’s thigh. Daddy’s cock, the color of it showing through his pale boxers now.

Fabric sticking so tight and transparent Newbie now knows Daddy is circumcised.

Newbie swallows, thunks his head against the tile a few times in self-punishment and looks at the ceiling, because he doesn’t feel like he’s _allowed_ to know that yet.

The misdirection catches Daddy’s attention, gets him to pause long enough to register the state they’re both in. 

He _grins,_ and, well. Nobody would ever accuse this man of humility.

Newbie loves that smug leopard-grin.

“You can look,” Daddy says as he takes back his hands and feels along the messed-up line of his own waistband. “Daddy _likes_ it when you look.” And once Newbie’s attention is obediently focused on _fucking god so hot wanna feel it on my tongue,_ Daddy drops his pants. Bends down grabs pants and afghan and sends them both slapping over the shower door to splat on the floor by the toilet.

His pale boxers are still on. Newbie, suddenly aware of the freedom in his arms and legs now that he’s no longer perched in a nest of wet cloth, leans away from the tiles and folds to knees (it’s a tight fit but of course Daddy’s shower is unnecessarily huge) and his fingers are softly edging behind the elastic snugging Daddy’s hips before…

Daddy is looking down at him along the length of his chest and oh _that’s_ why he goes to the gym so much, _okay._ The grip on Newbie’s wrists is tight as rope. Not pushing his hands away, but not letting them continue, either.

“You forgot to ask permission,” says Daddy.

Newbie has never, ever, _ever_ seen or heard of someone asking permission to _give_ a blowjob.

…Including a couple times when he might’ve preferred having the option to say no. He squints vacantly at the tiles.

Daddy’s hands slacken on his wrists, trail up his forearms and rest along the sides of Newbie’s head. “Go ahead, boy. But from now on you’ll ask first. You’ll ask _nicely.”_

“DaddycanIpleasesuckyourcockplease.”

The responding laughter melds with the hissing splash of shower water; all that reaches Newbie’s ears is the lowest bass line of Daddy’s voice. 

“Yeah, tha’s… that’s a nice way to ask,” he says. “Like I said, Newbie, go ahead. Show me what those _goddamn_ lips look like wrapped around Daddy’s cock.”

Newbie peels away the elastic gingerly, like a wound dressing. Stretches it all the way out so it won’t bump Daddy’s cock as he works it over and around and down. The fabric clings and turns inside-out as he drags it down thick thighs. He lets his palms drift down the backs of Daddy’s calves as he works the offending slop of fabric to the ankles, then holds himself firm and strong so Daddy can brace himself on Newbie’s shoulders as Newbie frees one foot then the other with hooked fingers.

Daddy doesn’t seem interested in dealing with the boxers, so Newbie drapes them over the soap dish shelf thingy behind him. 

Only then does Newbie look up — slowly. A trace of uncertainty, still. There might be some kind of cruel joke waiting for him, still. He’s heard of Perry Cox’s prowess at playing Gay Chicken.

_(Not Perry Doctor Cox. DADDY.)_

Falling shower water breaks into a thousand droplets all along the length of Daddy’s cock.

Newbie licks the water off faster than he could possibly think any thoughts at all right now. Lifts the cock with ginger overhand fingers (feels the weight of it) to slurp away the line of water that’s collected along the underside. More water coming, of course. It pelts the side of Newbie’s face; he closes the one eye to protect it from splashes, and washes each side of Daddy’s cock with his tongue.

Pauses, watches the water gather anew. It forms a shiny little river in the groove behind the bare head of Daddy’s cock.

Just one more thought in Newbie’s head, for now, just one last thought for a moment:

That would sure fit nice and snug inside the softest parts of his mouth.

…Gosh it sure does.

His tongue keeps looking for water, searching by touch, swallowing what he finds. No strategy or pattern here. Just… eagerness.

When he tilts his head back _just so_ and rests his mouth wide open — Daddy’s cock just resting on the pillow of his tongue — the shower water falls in, gives Newbie something new to close his lips around, something fresh to drink down that’s so clean, that’s the _definition_ of clean, but that smells like — _him_ like — 

“God _save_ me, Newbie, I like yer mouth a lot more like this than I do when you’re gabbin’ it at me all the live-long day.”

Newbie closes his lips and pushes his face harder toward Daddy’s belly, moaning until he can’t moan anymore because something big and smooth and with a pulse is blocking his voice and his breath.

When the tip of his nose grazes belly, twists Daddy’s water-slicked happy trail the wrong way, Newbie thinks it’s probably by virtue of his nose’s size, but gosh darnit if he doesn’t let himself believe it’s an _accomplishment_ to be _proud_ of like a _good boy._ His feet wiggle against the corner of the shower, soles up, and he tightens his hold on Daddy’s hips as if that could hold his attention. _Look. Daddy look. Look how happy._

“Good… _good_ Newbie. Goodgood _christ_ good boy my _god SO_ good…”

Newbie’s head is buzzing and muzzy with steam and the white noise of water and the steady rumble of praise so painfully desired that he barely believes it’s happening in his ears not his thoughts. 

The squeak and pop of a plastic container lid snapping open doesn’t find its way through his blurry arousal-brain until something _cold_ touches his scalp.

He jerks backward, fingers turning to nails on Daddy’s hips. Mostly he’s just pleased with himself for resisting the reflex to bite down before getting the dick free from his mouth.

But as he raises eyes to Daddy’s face (blocking the water spray with one hand so he can open both eyes), the cold has already gone warm, and Daddy’s fingers are working their way through his hair, spreading a new sensation across Newbie’s head. And the crackly sound of tiny popping suds. And the scent of shampoo that Newbie — for once — can’t identify off the bat, but is clearly expensive and clearly marketed very specifically to men.

“Don’t stop yet, Newbie.”

He closes his eyes and hums, adjusting to the new feeling (the new type of _getting attention)_ , then slides his hands round the back to Daddy’s ass and pulls Daddy’s cock into his mouth again using only lips and tongue.

Newbie works with some rhythm this time, easygoing slurp in and easygoing slide out, the bending of his neck readily and automatically matching the soft swirls of Daddy’s fingers shampooing his hair. 

“Daddy made a mess of you, and Daddy’s damn well gonna clean you up,” mutters The Voice hovering above him, somewhere near heaven. Then, lower, and almost like a threat: “Then I’m gonna mess you up all to hell right over again.”

Newbie’s eyes close fully when the washing reaches the back of his head and edges down near his nape. He pulls off just long enough to fill his lungs with breath and then slides Daddy’s cock in, and in and in, inching forward on his knees, pressing his chest to Daddy’s thighs, bending his head forward to give Daddy as much nape as he can and to take as much cock as he can. His breath gets cut off just as his forehead lands on warm belly. He pushes on.

And Daddy’s softly scrubbing fingers become a palm flattened against Newbie’s nape, and Daddy’s breath becomes a single long loose hiss, and Newbie would stay here — holding Daddy in his throat, Daddy holding his head like it’s something to love and protect — until he died. And he’d die happy.

But the cradling hands tighten in his soapy hair and on his ear and pull him back and off suddenly.

Newbie coughs, eyes watering, lungs trying to sort the difference between steam and usable oxygen. Involuntarily he rubs his forehead with the back of a wrist. There’s shampoo on his face. It’s going after his eyes.

Daddy, hands still wrapped around Newbie’s head, turns him toward the water and under it, sweeps the soap away under the rinse, sweeps hair back. Tips Newbie’s head back and gentles the corners of his mouth open with thumbs, opening his airway as if to intubate a patient.

Newbie’s distracted by the water pelting his face and doesn’t notice that Daddy’s crouched down, one knee on either side of Newbie’s body, until his hair is slicked fully clean and he’s permitted to turn his head and look.

“Fucking… _good boy,_ Newbie. God, I dunno what else to say, shit.”

His throat’s too raw and swollen to let him tell Daddy that _good boy_ is more than enough to say. Is the _best_ thing. He smiles, sideways and weak. 

“You were turning purple. And on the one hand, _jesus_ that’s _dedication._ I don’t even — I don’t — no one’s—“ He breaks off, rolls his eyes up and laughs an I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-fucking-seeing laugh, wipes water from his brow and nose. “‘Course you do _realize_ that if you asphyxiate on my dick we won’t be able to do this anymore, ‘cause I’m just not, not-not-not- _nawt_ into necrophilia, Newbie, I’m not. I’m not, I’m just not.”

He can’t say _yes Daddy_ so instead he nods, and picks at his fingertips. They’re getting pruny. Daddy takes a minute to collect the rest of his breath and wits.

“Stoppin’ you there either way,” he says then. “Woulda finished me off and, Newbie, I am _so far from done_ with you yet.” And he emphasizes the point with a languid stroke of his own dick, jutting out between his crouching legs.

Newbie glances down at the tip of it hovering barely two inches from his own leg. Swallows involuntarily.

And then Daddy’s hand touches _Newbie’s_ cock. Just… just touches it.

(And still, somehow, with just that one touch, manages to make it _feel like a cock_ instead of… something else, something misplaced. He gulps and stares at Daddy’s mouth.)

“Daddy wants to fuck you, Newbie.”

Oh.

“Do you want Daddy to fuck you?”

Fingers slide up Newbie’s tiny length, then down again, tease their way past foreskin to something _so_ thirsty to be touched that Newbie’s spreading his thighs so hard he bangs his knees on the shower wall and canting forward trying to shove his entire everything into Daddy’s hand. And it’s _Daddy_ touching him. It’s Perry Doctor Daddy Cox. Newbie gasps and sobs at the same time, ends up coughing.

Lips against the skin just under his ear stage-whisper, “Would you like that, boy?”

_”YesDaddy_ please oh my _god_ please, fuck me like you’ve wanted me from day one.” Wow his voice is ragged.

The fingers pull away — aww, man — and Daddy smacks him softly upside the head. (Wet hair splats.) “I _have_ wanted you from day one, ya dingus.”

Newbie’s smile is sad and, maybe inappropriately, chiding. _Liar. Sweetheart, but liar._

“Aaand you don’t believe me.”

Newbie shakes his head, still holding the smile.

“That’s not yer place to decide, now, is it.”

Newbie shrugs.

“Well.” Daddy climbs to his feet, holds out a hand to help Newbie do the same. “Nothin’ for it. C’mon. Time _yet again, already,_ to learn you a thing or two, Newbie. _God_ you’re gonna be the death of me at this rate.” He shuts off the water.

The towel that Daddy loops around Newbie’s back is a deep eggplant color with lavender-colored art nouveau swirly-boops along the edges and… doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Daddy would own. It’s a little _too_ lovely to be only a pleasant surprise.

“Pretty color,” he remarks. His tone is very flat, for someone whose naked body is being rubbed down by the man they’ve been crushing on for months.

Daddy makes one of his long-suffering faces and steps away to run his fingers and eyes down a short stack of poorly folded towels stuffed into the shelf above the toilet. “Jordan’s leftovers,” he mumbles to the shelf. “Gotta have _something_ on hand to mop up spills and shame. ’S real hardwood in this place, yanno?”

“Oh.” Newbie finishes examining the embossed swirly-boops and scrubs the thing slowly over his skin. “We had a towel like that. Mom used it on the dog when it was raining.” And then the dog used it as a paramour after they got him fixed.

“It was just the one on top of the stack, kid.”

“Dog towel.”

“They’re _all_ dog towels. They were my _ex-wife’s.”_ Ah, there’s the old familiar irritation.

Great. Mood Killer McGee strikes again.

Daddy boops him on the nose.

Newbie blinks, then blinks again and huffs in surprise. Then blinks one more time because the first few times didn’t work and he looks questioningly (and slightly affronted) at Daddy, who carries on efficiently rubbing down Newbie’s shoulders and hair with the beer-towel as if he never will, and certainly never _has,_ booped anyone’s nose _ever,_ no not even a kitty’s and you can be damn sure of _that_ and write it down in your Dear Diary.

“The _point_ is it’s for cleaning up messes,” says Daddy. “And just look at the mess I’ve made of you, kiddo.” He’s worked the towel all the way down to Newbie’s ankles, and now stands up straight again (his back pops, twice) and flops the damp towel across Newbie’s head, blocking his vision, scrubbing at his hair. “There. All better.”

And somehow… it is.

Newbie’s grinning when the towel falls off his face and fumps to the floor with the sopping blanket and pants. The mess hasn’t gone away, it’s just been transferred from him onto the bathroom. Like the stain in _The Cat in the Hat Comes Back._ His grin turns sheepish and self-deprecating before Daddy sees it.

Daddy’s eyes don’t come back to Newbie’s face, anyway; they get stuck on his chest, then his neck — a long line of water drips from Newbie’s hair down the side of his neck and curves round to the front, forms a shiny pool in that little dip between his collarbones. Tickly.

Newbie presses his back into the towel bar on the wall and holds himself very, very still. And follows the feeling of the water trailing down the thinnest skin of his throat. And watches Daddy’s eyes tracking the movement of that water. And surrenders when the edges of his vision blacken, the breath in his body turns faint and hot, the knot that normally lives in his stomach unties and uncoils and slithers through his insides and when it reaches the space between his hips it spills a slow run of magma that rolls slowly down his core and. He isn’t sure if that’s water touching his neck or the black touch of Daddy’s dilated eyes and unmitigated _attention._

The towel bar digs into his back. He’s grateful for something to ground himself on.

He pulls in a breath through his mouth. Tries for a deep one, to keep from passing out, but his muscles are viscous glowing liquid and can only pull in a little bit of air, just a little bit, and even that shakes his bottom lip as it passes through.

Then Daddy’s hands are on the thickest part of his scrawny shoulders squeezing him together pulling him in and Newbie falls forward, falls chin tilted back, falls throat-first against Daddy’s _mouth_ tongue on his chest retracing the water’s trail up his neck TEETH sliding a dirty-old-man tongue across helpless skin.

By the time Daddy leaves off his neck and kisses his mouth again, Newbie has no sense of gravity or of his own limbs. Only of the crumbledown meltaway happening to him, and the craggy-goat-infested-mountain-that’s-actually-a-volcano-waking-up-(suprise!) that is Daddy, that is Daddy Doing This To Him.

Oh god is this what love could’ve been all along?

Stubble scrapes him raw along his cheekbone. Feels like bleeding. He’ll bleed and more, and he knows how much blood you can lose and still be fine, and so does Daddy, so Daddy can have his blood if he wants it. Blood is fire-hot so take back some of this heat Daddy it’s too much. 

_Can you walk?_ says Daddy.

Walk? Who? Walker Texas Ranger?

_I’ll take that as a no._

Something soft touches the backs of his knees, just at the height to be a dog. Go lay down, Rowdy, daddies are busy.

_Bend your knees for me, Newbie. I gotcha._

The body remembers things like “knees” and “bending”. Newbie’s back scrapes up the wall; the wall slides down his back. The towel bar runs all the way down his spine like a stick dragging fenceposts and then disappears from awareness. The floor is just a concept now. Knees rise up near his shoulders. What a strange place for knees to be. Daddy’s arms snake their way through the bend behind Newbie’s knees and across his thighs and around his lower back and then the wall launches away and they move together. 

That feeling of the very top of the roller coaster, that feeling in your belly like, oh wait I’m not falling yet but something’s definitely about to happen here. 

(That _other_ feeling of the roller coaster, that strapped-in feeling that makes you safe enough to enjoy the fall, that redefines adrenaline from _survival_ to _fun.)_

He burrows his nose down into the top of Daddy’s curls. They squeeze water all around Newbie’s nose like a sponge that hasn’t been wrung out.

_Happy up there?_

He nods and squelches the side of his cheek against Daddy’s moppy hair.

_Yyyyeah Daddy needs to fuck you._

The thing that happens to Newbie at those words happens too fast to track, but once the moment’s passed he’s left clinging, hard, to the naked body that has become his ground, and trying to grind every inch of himself against every inch of Daddy even though spines don’t work that way.

The air is a bit colder suddenly, a bit brighter, thinner without the steam. Newbie’s elbow scrapes a doorframe. The scent of shampoo fades. The scent of blankets and neglected laundry and human sleep envelop him. 

Goosebumps chase a shiver across his bare back. He huddles tighter, and curves his head down. Buries his face in the only source of warmth he has, slotting the bridge of his nose against the top of Daddy’s hardworking trapezius.

Comfy. Newbie nuzzles in, seeking a place of rest for his head even while his hips bob and squirm and grind and try to feel _something._

…And yet, it’s not until he tries to grind his dick against Daddy’s belly (a softer belly than Daddy would like to admit, and softer than what Newbie’s unmentionables are really hoping for right now) — and Newbie feels himself slide through a damp trail where he _knows_ Daddy’s skin was dry a second ago — that he finally becomes conscious of how _super mega horny_ he is.

“Oh no,” says Newbie.

“Wha’s that?”

“I need to be fucked, Daddy.” Okay yes you said that out loud _and you meant it._ Don’t question it, just go with it. _Go_ with it for the love of _god!_ “Please? Please Daddy I need it, I can’t, please. Help me, Daddy, I wanna feel good, okay? Please? Please!” He presses his face harder into Daddy’s body, presses his eyelids against powerful shoulder. 

Somehow, saying it out loud cut free whatever inhibitions his hips were still holding onto and now they’re just grinding rubbing sliding seeking, working Newbie’s whole body like the world’s most languid piston. Newbie tries to anchor himself to something so those hips don’t just up and carry him away. 

The only anchor here (the only anchor he wants-needs- _must-have)_ is Daddy.

Newbie’s arms shake with the exertion of holding on. Luckily Daddy is holding on right back. Helping him.

“Help me, Daddy?” he says again, voice pinching high like more tears are stuck in his throat, climbing up his windpipe toward his eyes with their sharp little claws.

“Safety first, boy.” Daddy’s body tilts as he leans to open the nightstand drawer, tilting Newbie right along with him.

Newbie clings harder, primordial fear of falling (fear of _dropping)_ kicking in. His arms are too tired. He adds his teeth to the mix of anchor points.

Daddy straightens up _fast_ with a gurgle-grunt of ouchie. “No teeth. That’s a bad Newbie.”

He stops biting, less because of the scolding than because he no longer feels about to fall. Dr. CoxDaddy’s scoldings are just a background noise, y’know? They’re everyday. They’re more grounding than upsetting, really. 

But upending, then correcting, the balance of gravity makes Newbie feel heavier and hotter in the private parts. He whines. The whine stumbles on its way out.

Daddy glances from the bed to the boy, weighs some mysterious options.

“Fuck it,” he says and turns away from the bed and slams Newbie-first into the wall.

The arm behind Newbie’s back disappears and the wall holds him instead while Daddy’s hands do things out of sight, somewhere in the empty air below Newbie’s firm-like-mutton butt. Crinkle-crinkle sounds. “Wrap it ‘fore you tap it,” Newbie recites, giggling deliriously at Daddy’s eyeroll.

“Quote one more college safe-sex poster at me and you’re not getting any lube.”

Newbie readjusts his arms around Daddy’s shoulders, climbs a bit higher with his thighs, already tired of holding himself up. “Hang in there!” he says, because nothing starts his mouth-motor quite like being told to shut up.

“That’s it. No lube for you.”

“Hang-in-there kitty isn’t a safe-sex poster,” Newbie says, clutching harder.

“You’re saying this sex wouldn’t be safer if you weren’t clinging to me like a cat falling out of a tree?”

“Touché,” says Newbie; Daddy gives his ass a light smack, and he squeaks and jumps because his ass is _really_ tender and he couldn’t see it coming. “Tushy,” Newbie corrects himself.

“Oh my god shut _up.”_

“Make me,” says Newbie.

“Been tryin’ to do all fuckin’ _year.”_

“Maybe you need a new tactic.”

“Maybe that I do,” he rumbles, pressing his whole body into Newbie’s, sending the diesel-engine growl of his voice straight through Newbie’s _everything._

Daddy braces his forearms under Newbie’s sore, sad butt, and hikes Newbie’s whole body a little higher — wall’s cold against his back — then lowers him down again, slowly, and Newbie thinks he’s just shifting position again until he—

Newbie makes a very loud noise. 

_Hhh wow._ Words?

Nope. No words. Only NOISES. 

Oh, but _words._ Whatever Daddy might say, if you don’t narrate the thing then it Didn’t Happen. That’s how you can make sure your life story is a happy one. But it also means that you have to narrate all the things you want to be real, or they aren’t. 

You need words to narrate. A bunch of adjectives at _least._ Newbie can’t reach any adjectives. Only noises. Kind of upset noises because he can’t find the words to make this _real_ and _this needs to be real._

Daddy’s hand comes up and claps over Newbie’s whining mouth; losing the support of that arm lets Newbie’s weight fall right down a few inches and _hhfffWOW_ that’s. Yes that’s. That’s a cock. Going where no cock has gone since premed.

Okay, one word and that’ll be good enough. That’ll be excellent. Cock is an _excellent_ word.

The latex drags, skidding along Newbie’s softest skin in sharp little shocks of friction resistance. He howls into Daddy’s palm and keeps howling and, well I mean, so maybe a quick-ish entry is technically merciful when there’s no lube but _still._

He said not to call him Dr. Cox, but then he turns around and does something so Dr.-Cox- _mean._ Unfair.

Dr. Cox-Daddy bows his forehead against Newbie’s chest, his panting breath hardening Newbie’s right nipple (a small miracle; Righty’s had some permanent sensation loss since surgery and rarely perks up for anything these days). Newbie’s noises go shrill.

“I _said,”_ says Daddy, lifting his head and _wow_ he’s never looked this glazed without a near life-threatening BAC level, “shut _up.”_

Newbie squeezes his thighs, knotted around Dr. Daddy’s hips, making them both groan just faintly, like they’re reluctantly admitting something to each other. 

Newbie’s trying not to stare; Daddy’s trying not to make eye contact at all. 

Both fail.

“Can’ hel’ it,” Newbie mumbles through Daddy’s hand. Can a mumble also be a plea? Apparently it can.

“Damn you,” says Daddy, pulling out a bit but pressing his forehead to Newbie’s ribs as if to make up for it, and as he slides back in (a little easier this time) he adds, “and _damn_ your stupid… stupid… _puppy-dog eyes!”_

He pulls his hand away from Newbie’s mouth, to hold Newbie’s weight more responsibly.

Leaving Newbie with the perfect opportunity to cock one eyebrow and say, simply, “Woof.”

Honestly, he’s expecting more punishment for that — having decided in advance that it’d be worth it — but what he gets instead is a pause, and an expression that seems to change the entire shape of Dr. Daddy’s face. 

Which wipes all the “Dr.” out of the “Daddy” and suddenly the man fucking Newbie against the wall is fresh out of medicine, is staring at Newbie’s mouth with shocked helplessness, is staring at Newbie’s eyes with mission-from-G-d _determination._

“…Fuck,” Daddy says, eventually.

Newbie, following impulses that seem to know more about what’s going on than he does, braces his forearms across Daddy’s shoulders, grabs the back of Daddy’s curls with one hand and the skin of his upper back with the other, and tightens his knees around knobby hips, sinking into the warm feeling of love handles spreading into the pressure of Newbie’s inner thighs.

“Good boy,” says Daddy, then blinks, like the words surprised him.

Supporting fingers dig deep into the flesh under Newbie’s weight, hold him lift him _pin_ him while Daddy’s body finds a rhythm it likes. The wall thumping-scraping Newbie’s back claims a patch of skin for chafing. Daddy’s hips smack his ass like another spanking.

His eyes are already shut so he digs his face into Daddy’s shoulder.

_”Look at me.”_

He tries. 

His relentless imagination can’t _take_ looking into the face of Perry Cox Really And Truly Fucking Him Against A Wall without bringing the word _lover_ into it.

Every string in his body yanks tight. His spine curves backwards, forcing them both away from the wall.

Later he’ll remember how Daddy didn’t try to shut him up this time. How when Daddy clutched and curled into him, pressed his face into Newbie’s sternum and groaned straight through him, it tingled so sharply he saw stars. And he’ll remember how nothing in particular made any sense at all but instead of existential terror it felt like _freedom._

Conversely, he will _never_ be able to remember how his feet got back on the floor, or how he and Daddy finally got into bed. When his brain clears enough to start recording new memories again, they’re lying on their sides, nose to charmingly large nose. _I don’t spoon, Newbie._

JD smiles a hazy smile.

“Mmm, yep,” says Dr. Cock. “There it is,” and yes you just called him _Dr. Cock_ and no one can never know and yet, somehow, you can already feel the phantom sting of The Todd’s high five. “That’s why there’s a rule against hidin’ your face.”

“What?” JD mumbles.

“Knew you could smile like that. Irritating little sunshine champ like you, there had to be a smile like that somewhere in there.”

JD pulls his face back a little bit and squints, trying to focus. “…What?” he tries again, feeling his idiot grin peel wider as he speaks.

“Idiot,” mutters Daddy — yes, idiot grin, like he just said — as he leans in to kiss the Newbie on the forehead. (JD’s eyes shut.) “Count yourself lucky you still occasionally stumble on the right answer.”

“Wait,” says JD. The word’s out of his mouth before he can stop it, and the rest follow the same way. “Does that mean—“

“Newbie So Help Me God if you try to ruin this the same way I _wish_ I didn’t know you’ve ruined every _other—“_

“—you were like. _Actively trying_ to—“

“—to get you to smile like that? I’ll admit to nothing and _if_ you keep pushing this I’m gonna spank you again but this time I promise you thatcha won’t like it.” And his hand comes out of nowhere to tap down on Newbie’s ass, playful and mildly threatening, then slides all the way up the length of his body — dragging his awareness along with it — to fist tight in his hair. “Daddy _likes it_ when he can make you that happy.”

Words that kind shouldn’t sound this dangerous shouldn’t _be this hot_ and Newbie, like Daddy’s hand, comes out of nowhere.

It’s shallow and fleeting for an orgasm, just a swirl and a whiteout and then he’s holding onto Daddy’s upper arm as his only anchor while the rest of him shakes, twitches, and generally wrings every last drop of sensation out of his already-fried nervous system.

When he catches his breath, there’s a moment of clarity. Or a moment of what seems at the time to be an awful lot _like_ clarity. 

And what he sees is the unifying thread that’s run between every last one of Perry Cox’s words, actions, and orders today. It stretches back way farther than that, but the Newbie is very, very tired now, and can only follow it back to the bathroom in pediatrics, no farther. His attention pauses over the part where Daddy was sketching out the rough outline for what he wanted Newbie to—

The moment ends, leaving him with _you’ll_ thank _me when I decide we’re done with punishment._ Oh no. Oh no he forgot.

“Thank you, Daddy,” he says. (Daddy hums, seemingly unconcerned.) 

“Thank you for. Punishing me. And. Everything.” (Daddy takes a deep breath through his nose and firmly strokes the bare spot behind Newbie’s ear with a thumb. _My pleasure,_ more growled than spoken.) Then Newbie’s eyes fall shut and he laughs.

“Wha’s funny?”

Nothing. _Just happy._ “Think I ruined your poor sofa,” he says. “What a way to go.”

Dr. C… Da… Per… He chuckles. Like, an actual, warm _chuckle._ (JD tingles and squirms his feet at the sound.) “You did everyone a favor, including the couch,” he says. “’S high time for a new one anyway. I always hated that one. Jordan picked it out.”

“Oo, can the new one be yellow?”

“Say what now?”

“Always wanted a yellow one. Bright sunny yellow. Like an egg yolk.”

“…Of course you do. Mighty bold of you to assume that you get a say in this. ‘Cause ya don’t.” 

“Sure.”

“And no, it will _not_ be egg-yolk yellow. I honestly can’t think of anything more atrocious.”

_“Lavender paisley,”_ JD intones, dreamily.

“I’m _really_ tryin’ not to kill this snuggle-puppy mood here, but I wanna make it crystal-clear — and I mean it _really double-blind peer-reviewed For Realsies real_ — _you_ are not buying furniture with me. _I_ am buying furniture for _my_ apartment so _I_ can save myself some hassle by breakin’ you _both_ in at once.”

“Mm, I can live with that.”

“Can you now,” he mutters as he flops a heavy arm across JD’s shoulders and hauls him in closer. 

“Just as long as it’s not brow—“

_“Ohhh_ -hoh you _better believe_ it’s gonna be brown.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“I never joke about interior decorating, Gladys.”

“Oh we’re back on the girls’ names. Great.”

“That’s what you get for pushing your luck, boy.”

JD falls silent. An apologetic kiss falls on his forehead.

“This’ll be the death of you,” says Dr. Cox. “I told you I’m _not_ a nice person.”

JD huffs an extremely small laugh. “Don’t have to be ‘nice’ to be _good.”_

“Please don’t. Don’t get yer Sister Mary Sunshine optimism all over my personality, JD, it’s a _mistake.”_

So much for afterglow.

“JD, listen to me. Outside of these walls? This is _Not. Happening._ Is that clear? ‘Cause I reallyreally, really need this to be _very extra clear_ for you. Outside of these walls, _this is not happening_ and _has never happened._ We’re talkin’ the total collapse of my _very_ carefully groomed reputation and elaborate social network and _a very, very unhappy Me.”_

“Yeah yeah, I understand.”

“Which means going back to normal tomorrow.”

“…yeah.”

“And everything that entails.”

“I _get it,_ alright.”

“Do you? Were you actually listening? ‘Cause I can’t help but feel like—”

“Back to normal, nothing happened, casual cruelty in front of all my friends and colleagues and I can’t say shit about it.”

“Aaand as I suspected, you missed the most important part, _again,”_ says Dr. Cox. “I said _outside of these walls,_ Newbie. ’Cause in here?” He pauses for dramatic emphasis, glomps JD with both arms and squeezes him so hard his back pops. “In here, you’re Daddy’s baby boy. Y’hear me?”

The static at the edges of reality expands. “Yes, Dr. Cox.”

“Whassat?”

“Yes, Daddy. Thank you, Daddy.”

Dr. Daddy kisses him on the temple, on the mouth. “You’re Daddy’s _good_ boy.”

JD exhales. And… relaxes. Even if it’s just for a minute.

“…Thank you, Daddy,” he says again.

The sigh that answers him expresses nothing but contentment.

Wild.


End file.
